Picking Up the Pieces
by Wintertime
Summary: Sequel to "Blood in the Water." From beginning to end, Greg has a messy recovery and a long way to go.
1. Round and Round We Go

**Disclaimer: **I don't own CSI - - CBS does.  Done for non-profit fun and sadistic pleasure, so I'd like not to be sued.

**Notes: **Glad to have everybody onboard for the sequel to "Blood in the Water."  To make up for the lack of Greg in the aforementioned Greg story, this entire one is set from his POV (well, it's third-person, but you get what I mean).  Of course, the other characters, and particularly Grissom, are still important, so remember what they went through in "Blood in the Water" and what their thoughts were.  In short, remember that you know quite a few things that Greg doesn't.

So, this is a Greg story _with _Greg this time, Greg both suffering and recovering from all the sadistic angst I put him through, and it's not going to be easy for him, but I'll give you one assurance that you didn't have with the first story . . . he's not going to die.  Other than that, no promises, as usual.

This _is _a sequel, so I'd much prefer if you read "Blood in the Water" first, but if you're trying to run this alone, I'll try to sketch in a quick background: Greg was attacked before the beginning of the story, and survived by pure chance - - a bullet circled through his skull instead of going through his brain.  He was comatose for about a month while the CSI team investigated his attack, and eventually found the culprit, Melissa Sharpe (a cadet CSI envious of Greg's chance at fieldwork) and her lackey boyfriend, Trey.  They're both going to be back for an encore.  To make matters worse, Nathan Sanders, Greg's estranged father, arrives in Vegas at Sara's call.  And, well, he's a controlling, borderline psychotic that has been variously described as "the spawn of Satan" and a "pathological narcissist."  Then there were the good old standbys of "asshole" and "bastard."  The latter actually came from the night shift, so you can guess that he's not a good guy.  Anyway, Nathan hit the road after threatening to shut off Greg's life-support and generally making no excuse for his inhuman actions.

Longest Author's Notes _ever_.  Read the story now, okay?  Please?

**

_How long have I been sleeping?_

_And why do I feel so old?_

_Why do I feel so cold?_

_My heart is saying one thing_

_But my body won't let go. . ._

-Sarah McLachlan

******

**Chapter One: Round and Round We Go**

****

******

_Greg was twelve the year his mother left.  She left when he was asleep, just slid out the door after packing his lunch - - turkey sandwich, potato chips, animal crackers, and a can of Mountain Dew.  The next day, Greg would methodically go through the house and throw away all the turkey, all the potato chips, all the animal crackers, and open all the Mountain Dew cans and pour them into the sink, but for the present, he slept, his hair mussed against his pillow, swallowed by his own dreams.  Annabeth Hojem Sanders didn't come into his bedroom to kiss him goodbye, and Greg, years later and years wiser, would guess that she didn't want to wake him up.  He was a light sleeper, and once he realized that she was leaving, he would have done whatever he could do to keep her there._

_He didn't wake when his mother came to kiss him because she never did.  He woke, instead, when his father turned on the lights, slamming his bedroom into a sudden brightness.  Greg knew better than to squirm into the covers - - his father was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise man, and he was always irritated when Greg tried to sleep late.  He sat up, instead, a kid in a faded baseball tee and a streak of dried clay from art class clinging to the back of his hand.  He noticed it; covered it with the covers.  His father liked things to be neat._

_Indeed, Nathan Sanders himself looked impeccable, even at that early hour in the morning.  He looked around his son's room with the faintest wrinkle of disgust on his mouth.  He rarely entered into Greg's bedroom - - it was one thing for which Greg had always been thankful - - and he stood, rather than sitting in one of the low-slung canvas chairs, or the end of the bed._

_"Your mother's gone," Nathan said._

_"What?  Mom?"  Fully awake, Greg pushed through the covers.  A mesh of cotton fell away from his body.  The scruffy dry-clay mark gleamed in the new light, and pulled at his skin when he moved his hand to bring himself upwards.  "Where'd she go?"_

_"She didn't say."_

_"When is she coming back?"_

_"She isn't.  Hurry up.  You're going to miss the bus and I don't want to have to take you.  She laid out your clothes on the sofa and your lunch is on the counter."  Nathan's scowl was intense and Greg realized, quite without noticing that he did, that he was afraid of his father.  And he thought that his father hated him. "You're the only one she left anything for."_

_Greg scrambled through the covers and winced as his feet touched the cold floor.  If he had hurried out to brush his teeth and pour himself some cereal, it might have ended then.  But he saw something in his father's eyes - - a touch of sadness beneath the anger, and Greg was too observant for his own good, and too kind to know when it was better to be cruel.  And Nathan was still his father, so he said:_

_"I'm sorry, Dad."  He was, too, and genuinely.  His mother had left them both.  They were going to be alone together._

_Nathan turned on him.  The motion was quick and snappish.  The man was pale, and, to Greg, it was like looking in a bizarre funhouse mirror; seeing himself grown and frightened, or full of some other, more complex, unidentifiable emotion.  "Don't feel sorry for me, you little brat.  I lost her, but I have you, and you aren't going to get away."_

_"No, Dad."  He tried to get away but the room was suddenly larger than he remembered, and it was a full ten miles to the door._

_Nathan was smiling now, and that was worse.  "I've never hit you, have I?"_

_Something in Greg's head started yammering and pushing away, panicked schoolyard words, urging him to turn tail and run from his bully who wasn't a bully but his father.  He was twelve, pale, a goof, and good at science.  He knew about bullies.  He knew sometimes it was good to fight, and sometimes it was good to flee, and he even knew the reaction name: fight-or-flight.  He'd had fights before on the playground and he understood when he could win and when he would have to lose.  He wasn't consistent in choosing to fight or run - - he fought when he thought he could win, but only he knew that, and viewers were always confused._

_He couldn't fight his father._

_And his father wasn't a bully anyway, right?  
  
  
_

_"No, never," he said.  "You never hit me."_

_"Do you want me to?"_

_If only that door wasn't so far away.  If only he could _get _to it.  But he was stuck, and Nathan was smiling at him, and Greg thought, confusedly, that it must have been the same way the Big Bad Wolf had smiled, the way that made Little Red Riding Hood so scared.  It was the smile that said there were things to be eaten; things to be devoured whole._

_What came out of him was a guttural denial.  It tore his throat, but it was a denial, just, "No."_

_"Are you sure?  You haven't been a good child - - I know that.  And I'm going to have to raise you myself, now.  Your mother and I - - we never wanted children.  You were an accident, but we did our best with you, but you've never been grateful for that, just troublesome."_

_"I'm sorry, Daddy."  He flinched away from his own voice.  It sounded painful._

_"Are you going to be good for me, Gregory?"_

_That name.  No one at school called him Gregory.  Greg was quicker, Greg was faster, Greg sounded more like the name he was supposed to have.  Eleven years later, he would meet Gil Grissom and be nervous about his new job.  He would feel young and inexperienced even though he knew that he was good at what he did, maybe even the best at what he did, and he would feel that nervous grin on his face, and his mouth would chatter a mile-a-minute, and Grissom would look at him with a reversion of Nathan's expression.  With Nathan, it had always been good on the surface - - a plastic gleam of love shown for the sake of strangers who couldn't see deeper, and underneath would be anger, and irritation._

_Grissom would have a faint glaze of irritation, and underneath, there would be - -_

_Affection?  Liking?  Attachment?  An already willing feeling to protect some kid straight out of university?_

_Grissom would call him Greg, not Gregory, and not Sanders,  and that would cement the feelings of admiration that Greg would already feel by the time he got his interview._

_"I'm going to be good," he said, twelve and scared and years away from anyone he would call his real family.  "I'll be good, Dad.  I promise."_

_"Good boy."  Nathan hugged him, and Greg was smothered in his father.  The corded muscle, and the smells of cloth and cologne.  He'd been hugged before, but it hadn't ever felt so much like drowning.  His father's hand slid through the soft mess of the back of Greg's hair.  "You don't need to worry about catching the bus.  I'll give you a ride."_

_"Okay."  Some part of him thought it was over; some part of him knew that it wasn't - - but the door seemed closer, and he could no longer hear his own heartbeat.  "Thanks."_

_He even made it to the door and put his hand on the knob when Nathan said:  
  
  
_

_"Gregory?"  
  
  
_

_"Yeah?"_

_A slowly spreading smile, like molasses being poured: "I'm all you've got now."_

_Not, "you're all I've got" or "we have to be here for each other," or even, "it's just the two of us now," but "I'm all you've got now."_

_Greg said, "Yeah.  You are."_

**

"Greg.  Greg, wake up.  You're having a nightmare."  A gentle beam of pressure on his shoulder to wake him.  But he was already awake, wasn't he?  His dad woke him up by turning on all the lights.  It was a bright, glaring wake-up call, nothing like this gentle shake, but it worked.  He was awake - - oh.  Nightmare.  Grissom.  Coma.  House.

Greg opened his eyes.  "I was _not _having a nightmare."

Grissom didn't look apologetic for shaking him either way.  "You were talking in your sleep, and you didn't sound happy about it."

That wasn't on his list of things to explain to Grissom, mostly because he was sure that the conversation would be of the horrifying-comic variety.  _Well, boss, it was about my childhood, and I wasn't too happy about that even when it was going on, so yeah, I get why you'd think it was a nightmare.  In fact, sometimes I think it must have been._

"What time is it?"

Grissom glanced at his watch.  "One in the afternoon."

A glance at the drawn blinds clued him in, and the memories were slowly coming back.  Yeah, they'd both clocked out at seven, and Grissom had given him a ride back home - - if home counted as a huge, hollow townhouse with a great stereo system as its only asset.  They'd eaten, showered, and Greg had taken the guest room around eight.  And Grissom had his own room.

And that chair by his bed looked pretty dented.

"I told you that you didn't have to watch me sleep."

"I spent four weeks watching you sleep," Grissom said.  "It's hard to break the habit."

It wasn't as if Greg didn't appreciate the concern.  After all, it wasn't like he hadn't had the major/minor breakdown that they were all studiously not talking about.  Wasn't like he hadn't been in a coma for about a month, switching back and forth between nightmares, while his father wrecked havoc on the world outside.  And it wasn't even like he hadn't agreed to live with Grissom for a while so he could put things back together.  It had only been two days, but it was already annoying how much Grissom hung over him, like he was afraid a wrong word or a slip might send Greg back in time and back to West Palms.

He didn't know what he needed, but he didn't need that.

"I'm not going to just go back into a coma, you know," he said.  "Not unless you get fed up with me and crack me over the head.  Doc Brenner says I'm still pretty tender back there."

Grissom looked pained, as if he didn't appreciate the joke.  "I couldn't sleep," he said, as if being unable to fall asleep himself meant that the perfect activity to get him to drop off would be watching someone else do it, as encouragement.

Greg started to point out the ridiculousness of the statement, but closed his mouth instead.  Verbal zingers didn't have the same charm anymore.

Why did he have to keep waking up, anyway?  And why couldn't he sleep without dreaming?  Since the coma, he would have guessed that his sleep would be uninterrupted, his REM function way too frazzled to continue its work, but instead, he'd been dreaming constantly.  And they were vivid, realistic, and - - many of them - - real, just a rehashing of old memories.  Like his father.  And Melissa Sharpe.  Then he woke from past to present, and things weren't any better.

Grissom was watching him.  "Are you happy, Greg?"

What a weird question.

"Sure," he said, wondering why it sounded like a lie, even to him.  "Sure I am."

"If you have to repeat it, you're just validating it to yourself.  People who are sure of things only say them once."  Grissom had apparently been attacking another volume of Zen sayings, Greg thought sourly, and listened as his boss continued.  "You don't like to sleep, and when you do, you have dreams - - of course I've noticed," he said, off Greg's surprised look.  "You toss and turn, and you mutter."

"I don't think it would bother you so much if you'd stay in your own bedroom."  Greg kicked the covers off.  "Grissom, do you want me to leave?"

"No, of course not.  I'm trying to help."

"Well, I don't want help.  I told you I could work this out on my own."

"I do not," Grissom said mildly, "recall those words ever leaving your mouth."

He sat up and bounced his heels against the mattress.  It was a new, restless habit that he'd acquired somewhere between the hospital and Grissom's house, and he hated it.  He kicked back savagely, and bruised the back of his foot.  He gritted his teeth.

"Do you spend all your time coming up with snappy Zen comebacks to everything I say?" Greg asked bitterly.

"No.  Do you spend all your time coming up with the best ways to dodge my questions?"

"That's exactly what I meant."

"And that's exactly what _I _meant, Greg.  Nothing's going to change if you won't ever let anyone help you."

Greg chewed at his lower lip - - another new tic that he realized he'd acquired and was revolted by, but unable to stop - - and said, "Want to hear a riddle?"

Grissom sighed.  "Sure, Greg."

"How do you know when you've really reached rock-bottom?"

"How?"

"Gil Grissom starts telling you to open up to people."  It was a nasty thing to say - - and probably unfair - - the first time Dr. Brenner had heard Greg caustically smart off to Grissom, he'd scolded his own patient mercilessly once Grissom had left (_"That man did nothing but wait for you to wake up for four weeks.  Treat him with more respect.") _- - but what Brenner hadn't understood was that Greg _did _respect Grissom - - and he always had.  It just didn't change anything.

_I'm being pulled apart.  Everything in me is tearing up._

None of them _got _it.  They were all nice, even if they treated him like he was a delicate piece of glassware close to being broken, but they still didn't understand.  They didn't know what it was like to hang in a limbo that hadn't been a limbo at all.  And, maybe even more importantly, they didn't know what it was like to be_ attacked _like that, by someone they'd trusted.  Granted, he'd only had one date with Melissa, but he'd met her, and liked her.  He'd wanted another chance.

She'd paid attention to him and treated him like he was someone valuable.  How could he have resisted that?  In retrospect, it was a personality flaw - - his unerring willingness to be drawn to someone who showed him the slightest hint of affection.

He'd almost died because of the casual, unassuming trust - - because you didn't walk around believing that someone was going to hurt you.

And since then, he'd been on eggshells.  Every new person was a threat unspoken.  Even his friends . . . he loved them, but it felt impossible to open up anymore.  How easy was it to turn on someone?  How easy was it to flip a switch and decide that Greg was worth less than - -

_I've never hit you, have I?_

"Greg, what are you thinking about?"

"Trust."

"You remember the word.  I'm surprised."  Grissom frowned in reflex, and rubbed at his mouth.  "I'm sorry.  That was cruel."

Cruel.  Well, what _wasn't_?  In comparison to everything else, a sharp retort from Grissom shouldn't have been able to wound him, but it somehow had.  Everything meant more coming from Grissom.  A compliment was sweeter, a reprimand more hurtful.  He could tally them up on his fingers - - every single good and bad thing Grissom had ever had to say about him or to him, and was it sad, pathetic, or both that he wished Gil Grissom had been the one to wake him up the morning his mother had left?

He didn't accept Grissom's apology, even though he knew it was sincere and even though he knew he should have been apologizing himself.  After all, Grissom had given him a room and was putting up with the mood swings, and Greg felt bad for being able to do so little in return.

But trust. . . love. . . family. . . even friendship - - they were all so much harder now.

Besides, if he forgave Grissom, it would mean that he'd have to talk to him, and silence was easier.

"Are you going back to your own room?" he asked instead, hoarse from talking more than he had in days.  "Because I really want to get some sleep."

Grissom looked at him from behind the gentle curve of his glasses, and finally nodded.

"If that's what you want."

Nobody ever asked him what he wanted.  It didn't make him feel any better.  He rolled over away from Grissom, and by the time he turned again, the door was shut and he was alone.

Somehow, that didn't feel better, either.


	2. Good Enough

Nice to have everyone back!  *does the feedback dance*

**

_Calling home, all alone_

_You can call, I won't answer_

_Any question in my head_

_Remains until you feel the same_

_Never telling how I felt_

_was all I ever cared about. . ._

- Finger Eleven

****  
  
**

**Chapter Two: Good Enough**

******

He spent the next two nights with Nick, sleeping in the big double bed because of Nick's insistence.  He began to feel like a trade-off, something to hand around, a responsibility that no one wanted but that everyone had to take.  He would lie in Nick's bed, going from hot to cold and back again, twisting the sheets between his hands until he was almost shredding them, hating himself for thinking like that, being so ungrateful and so hurtful when it obviously wasn't true.  And it wasn't true, either, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they _were _glad to have him around.  It showed in their eyes, as they opened their house doors and rattled on about extra pillows, standing in the doorway with looks that said they'd give him anything he wanted, if he could only ask, but all he wanted was to make it go away, and he didn't think they could give that to him.  So yes, they wanted him, and that was the truth, but it was far easier to hear the lies at night, when he was scared to sleep and almost scared of the dark, wanting a nightlight or a teddy bear.  Something to keep him warm.

Nick went overboard on comfort food - - served him waffles and steaming bowls of soap every day until Greg thought his metabolism was going to kick back and he was finally going to gain that weight everyone in his childhood had gleefully warned him about.

"No more," he said, in protest to Nick scooping out more mashed potatoes and gravy.  "Seriously, man, I'll split open."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure.  It's good, though."

It was, too.  Nick was shyly good at cooking - - not something you'd necessarily expect - - and he was more than willing to prepare whatever was asked for.  Not a bad quality to have, in the grand scheme of things.  Simple pleasures, and all that.  Nick could cook, Grissom could listen, Catherine could comfort, Sara could talk, and Warrick could empathize, and if he'd needed any of that - - or all of that - - he would have been okay.  Instead, he still felt empty.  Didn't know what he needed, and didn't know how to go about getting it.

He struggled to find a good compliment.  "My mom would have liked this," he said, pointing at his fork, which was slowly sinking into the remains of the potatoes.  "She was after me when I was a kid to learn how to cook.  Said that any guy who knew how to cook was going to find a good woman."

"Your mom," Nick said slowly.

"Go ahead and say it."

"I hope she was better than your dad."  Nick looked angry, almost tense, and he stabbed at his roast.  The meat gave way under the mauling and fell apart.  He skewered a piece.  "We all met him, you know.  And I'm sorry if you loved him, but my basic reaction was to want him as far away from me as possible.  And no one wanted him near you at all."

Greg started to wish then that he hadn't mentioned his mother.  "I doubt that he was too eager to get near me anyway.  We weren't - - we weren't close."

"Good," Nick said savagely.  "Because he's an asshole."

"Grissom pretty much said the same thing."

"Grissom's right."  Nick chuckled suddenly - - a not quite humorless explosion of breath.  "You should have seen the two of them, by the way.  Circling around each other like they weren't sure who should attack first.  I'm not sure which one hated the other more."

"Grissom hated my dad?"  It wasn't so much that he didn't understand it as that he didn't suspect it.  His father was contemptible enough, but usually only towards him, and Greg had always guessed that Grissom was somewhat ambivalent towards him, so whatever disgust Nathan had directed at his son should have bounced by Grissom, unseen.

"Grissom was ready to kick your dad's ass," Nick said.  His eyes were glowing with the savage joy of some painfully good memory.  "He kicked him out of your hospital room."  
  


"No one talks to me about that."  Far from being full, he found himself suddenly ravenous again.  He gulped at his water and shoveled his way through the rest of the plate.  "Grissom wouldn't say anything about what happened while I was - - you know, out."

And Greg was curious.  Really curious.  The emptiness didn't change that.  He'd been _gone _for a month; things had happened, and he had the right to know.

Nick shrugged, uncomfortable.  "You weren't there, man."

"I was there," Greg said.  "Just not in my usual state of awareness."  He was trying for humor and it fell flat.  He wondered what they'd thought about him during the coma - - if anyone thought he might die, if they considered what it would be like if he didn't awaken.  He smiled, and the expression, usually so natural to him, felt clumsy and laborious.  "Tell me something, Nick.  Come on."

Nick tilted his chair back, and Greg could practically hear the linoleum creaking underneath the pressure.  His eyes were half-closed, and turned upwards, as if the ceiling was a road to the past.

"All right," Nick said.  "You want the little things or the big things?  And some of it, or all at once?"

"Some of it.  Some of, um, the little things, I guess."

"Sara brought you flowers," he said automatically.  "Daisies.  I think you saw those when you woke up.  And she tried to hit your father when he came with us to visit you.  Not without provocation, either."  His face darkened, and he muttered, "Ass.  Anyway - - little things.  I kept your apartment clean while you were gone.  Moved your CDs to your room.  We kept getting in fights with the temp DNA tech, because he wasn't as good.  Catherine had a serial killer case that took her a week to solve.  And we missed you, but I think that's one of the bigger things, don't you?"

His eyes were too kind.  They were understanding eyes, knowing eyes, and Greg remembered suddenly that Nick had been hurt, too - - after all, there had been the stalker, and he wanted to say something about that, except it looked like Nick had buried that past and didn't want to study it.  And it seemed rude, almost cruel, to surface memories that long undisturbed.

"Sure," Greg said.  His voice was hoarse.  "I think I would have missed you, too, if I'd had a clue what was going on."

"Are you going to be okay, Greggo?"

He wiped at his eyes.  Shit.  He hated crying in front of people.

"Probably."

"I'll be here, you know, if you're not."

It was that last straw - - that last bit of kindness that made him run from Nick, and he found Sara instead, and stayed with her a whole week, because Sara hated opening up to people and so it was easy to stay closed around her.  Like a box, he thought sometimes as he settled onto her sofa and into the claustrophobic smells of dust and old cotton.  Like shutting himself into a box, but it fit so nicely and so well around him that maybe he wouldn't have to leave, even if it was itchy.  Uncomfortable.  He'd never been very good at similes.

Sara didn't believe in comfort food, either, so he ate cornflakes and drank bottled water while he was there, and  for a while, it was good.

But what finally cinched his decision to leave again was that, for all the superficial differences, she wasn't any different from Nick or Grissom after all.  She still had that same half-evaluating, half-sad look around him, as if she was gauging his mental state and mourning the fact that poor Greg was so screwed up.  She was glad to have him, yes.  He was glad to be there, yes.

He just wasn't glad enough to stay.

When he knew he wouldn't spend another night in her apartment, he crawled into her bed at night, and it sounded sick and felt awkward at first.  She woke with a start and almost shouted before she realized it was him, and that he was crying.  She was wearing cotton pajamas, and he was in long striped pants, and they didn't make love, but just curled around each other, his head resting between her shoulders, making the cloth damp with his tears.  He didn't kiss her, even though a few months ago, he would have dreamed of this - - because crushes were sweet, and the more unattainable, the sweeter.  He would have loved the thought of lying next to Sara, who was good and nice and beautiful, sex or no, but now it was just like hugging a pillow, only she soothed him a little.  He could feel her pulse, and he knew that she could feel his, and they lay there in the darkness until the tears dried on his face.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't be."

"I shouldn't have come in here."

"It's fine, Greg."  Her hand found his, and she rubbed at it, comforting little circles.  "Really.  I get it."

"I'm pitiful," he said.  He didn't know whether or not he meant that, and decided he did.  "I just didn't want to be alone.  I'll get out."  He tried to move, but her hand was tight on his wrist.

"Stay," Sara said.  "We aren't doing anything wrong, and you're not doing anything to be ashamed of."  Her voice was firm, and he was desperately lonely, so he stayed the rest of the night, but he hightailed it out of there in the morning, and left Sara behind with a single hug, her dark eyes saying nothing except that she couldn't understand.

He hit up Warrick next, because he was reluctant to go to Catherine's.  After all, she had a family.

Warrick gave him a guest room with no questions and no shy look of pity.  Greg made his own bed in the mornings.  They ate scrambled eggs and rode in Warrick's car to work.  He chipped in for gas and groceries, and managed to elude the drifting, horrible feeling of loneliness for two weeks, that time, a record high.  Once, he was almost happy.  Warrick cared about him, but didn't ask anything of him, not even that he get better.  And that was easy.

Of course, not even Warrick was perfect.  There wasn't any late-night conversation in bed, any suffocating offer of understanding, and not even Grissom's refusal to let him sleep alone - - it was far more subtle, but just as unwelcome.

They were at work, for a change, not at the apartment, and Warrick had just dropped off a load of samples with an apology for the number and the amount of work they would require, and, since he was going off-shift in a few hours and Greg was working overtime, he said, casually:

"See you back at home."

It was the implication that he might belong somewhere that made Greg grab his bags again and take off that very night.  He made some vague excuse about wanting to give everyone a chance, uttered a shrill laugh, and went to Catherine's, phoning ahead to make sure it was okay.  He thought that maybe, with a kid and a job, Cath would be too busy to care too much, but he was wrong, and he failed his record high at Warrick's with a record low - - he only spent one night there.  Lindsay cuddled up next to him to watch a Disney movie, and she smelled clean, like orange juice and cotton candy perfume, and the hand that he used to stroke her hair was shaking.

Too much of it, he decided.  Too much innocence in Lindsay and too much sympathy in the glance Catherine threw him across the room.

He even went to his own apartment.  It didn't smell like Pledge anymore, just dust - - and he stood there in the blackness, unwilling or unable to reach for the light switch, and ran out so fast he must have burned the rubber off his sneakers.  Funny, how he lasted the shortest bit of time in a place where he was overwhelmed just by himself.

Or his old self, anyway.  He chided himself about lines drawn in the dust and headed out to the gas station.  He filled his car up and sat behind the wheel for almost ten minutes before he drove away.  He almost was smiling, since no one was asking him what was wrong.

_Gotta get out of here, _he thought, and why not?  He had a full tank of gas.  And all he would leave behind was a horde of understanding people who would probably only nod and say that they should have seen it coming.  And they were masochists, so they'd blame themselves, and he didn't want that on his head, and Greg told himself that that was the real reason he wasn't taking off - - not because he didn't want to go.

Except he had to go somewhere.

He drove and didn't pay any attention to where he was going.  He surfaced once from his own thoughts as he pulled to a screeching stop at a red light, and thought that it was amazing that he hadn't killed anybody yet.  No way was he driving at his full capacity.  He would have paid more attention to his surroundings in his sleep - - and hey, funny thing about that, sleep, and how it felt so much like a coma.  And did _every single little thing_ have to come back to that?

He ended up at Grissom's.  He'd been away from there long enough, at least, to hope that Grissom had maybe forgotten pity.  Besides, Grissom was . . . safe.  Greg still didn't trust him, didn't trust (and couldn't trust) anyone, but Grissom prevented him from some channels.  He wasn't going to end up crawling in bed with Grissom, he thought, his mouth twisting.  He caught a glimpse of the expression in the rearview mirror and almost recoiled in shock from the sight.  He didn't look like himself.

Greg tapped at the door.  It was oak, and his fist thudded against it, echoing through the townhouse.

It opened almost immediately, as if Grissom had been waiting just beside it.  "Greg.  Catherine called to tell me that you left her house.  I hoped that you might stop by."

His battered suitcase was heavy.  All he really wanted to do was put it down.

"I don't know if I can stay long," he said, and they both knew that he didn't mean he might leave because of some pressing engagement.  He just didn't know how long it would be before he had to get away again.  Just a runaway.  He'd told Grissom that he ran away from his family, and Grissom had told him that the night shift was harder to run away from.  They could track him down.

It had been comforting then.  Sounded too much like a threat, now.

"Do you trust me yet, Greg?"  Grissom's eyes were unreadable behind his glasses.  He was still the only one inside the room, Greg was still in the hot sunlight outside.

His smile felt broken and fragile on his mouth.

"Almost, boss."

Grissom finally nodded.  "It's good enough," he said, and took Greg's suitcase in his hand.  He stepped from the door and let Greg inside.

The air around him was cool, air-conditioned.  It felt good after the desert heat around the gas station, and he suddenly realized that he had never cooled his car down.  He'd been driving in Vegas temperatures for hours.  He breathed it all in, and looked around - - Grissom really had been expecting him.  Two plates were set up on the table, glass- and flatware.  He could smell something cooking.

Grissom must have noticed him sniffing, because he said, "It's Friday.  Fish.  Tuna noodle casserole."

"You're Catholic?"

"I lapsed.  But the fish stayed with me.  It's tradition, now."  Grissom was shuffling his things around, unpacking Greg's suitcase and moving the spare items around.  In a few minutes, he had effortlessly blended in Radiohead CDs with forensic magazines.  The DNA periodicals from Greg's things mixed in well with Grissom's entomology textbooks.  Greg watched the strange meeting of minds from across the room with a queasy feeling in his stomach.  Was it going to be too much this time, too?  Too welcome, too fast?

"The spare room's all yours," Grissom said, without looking up.  He zippered up the suitcase and handed it back, meeting Greg's eyes that time.  The pity was absent, the evaluation present.  That was fine.  He could deal with evaluation.  "Go ahead and unpack, and I'll serve."

"I like tuna."

Grissom nodded, and the faintest flicker of what might have been a smile appeared.  "That's good.  I wasn't sure.  I was afraid you might be a vegetarian."

Then, the smile was his.  "You got on Sara's bad side sometime, huh?"

"Just the once.  I've remembered since then.  She made it hard to forget."

Still smiling, he went to his room (_the spare room_, his mind snapped at him), and unpacked.  Socks in the drawer, boxers with them, clothes in the closet, wondering how long it would be until he'd have to load them up into the suitcase again.  He tried to be happy.  Maybe it would be a good run, like with Warrick.  Maybe Grissom wouldn't have to care too much right away.

He came back in and found Grissom puzzling over the fridge.

"Beer?  Water?"

"You're a two-beverage guy?"  He didn't wait for an answer.  "Beer.  Sure."  He hadn't ever been a heavy drinker, even in college, but sometimes there was a charm to a beer and even to being drunk - - though he only planned on taking advantage of the former.  It would be too maudlin and too screwy to get drunk in Grissom's townhouse.  He could only imagine the looks he'd get in the morning - - the cold, stainless steel reaction; apologizing to Grissom was like talking to a wall.  Nothing got through.

Grissom handed him a cold brown bottle, condensation running down the side.

"Food's on the table."

"I saw.  Thanks."

He sat down, making sure to place the beer on the proffered coaster.  The tuna casserole was coated with cheese and swimming with noodles.  It didn't have the charm of Nick's endless plates of spaghetti, but it was good enough.

Good enough.

"Were you really hoping for something more from me?" he asked.  His fork tines clinked against the plate.

"Yes.  But I'll take what I can get."  Grissom was starting on his salad, crunching lettuce leaves together with an oddly inept look on his face.  Greg reasoned it out and decided that it wasn't every day that Grissom sat down with a meal.  His usual schedule probably involved a handful of bugs in the morning and maybe a granola bar at night.

"It's good enough?" Greg said.

"Yeah.  Good enough."

Greg put his elbows on either side of the plate, folded his hands under his head, and laughed until he cried.


	3. Back on the Horse

**Notes: **Greg's mother appears in flashback form, but flashback form only, sorry.  And yes - - Greg does _almost _trust Grissom.  But the key word there is _almost_.  And trust me when I say that things are not going to be easy for the two of them.  In fact, they're going to be almost painfully hard.

**

We try to wash our hands of all of this 

_We never talk of our lacking relationships_

_Or how we're guilt-stricken, sobbing_

_With our heads on the floor_

_We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip_

-The Verve

******

**Chapter Three: Back on the Horse**

******

He started memorizing the semantics of things, evaluating his own life from the outside.  There were special exceptions that could be made for him now, he discovered.  He didn't want or welcome them, but they were there, nonetheless.  He started cataloguing a list of things that he could do now that he couldn't do before, and was dismayed by how long it was.  He had spent the night in bed with Sara, his cheek touching hers, tasting the bitter salt of his tears - - that wouldn't have been possible before.  And he could show up at Grissom's house with no invitation and expect to be taken in - - that was something that would have seemed ridiculous once, too.  He was tired of the exceptions but he felt that he somehow deserved them, that after all he'd gone through, some of the rules should have been broken for him.

It was more than he wanted, but no less than he deserved.

His work didn't falter.  Results were infallibly turned in on time, triple-checked as usual.  They were presented without flair, partially because he wasn't in the mood and partially because he knew Grissom wouldn't complain about it if he tried.  They might even be glad, take his flippancy as some return to a positive state, and so he held off, bitterly, from doing what they wanted.

After all, it wasn't going to last.  Sooner or later, Grissom would forget that Greg ever had a reason to not be okay, and some case would get under his skin, and he would say something coarsely, unintentionally harsh.  Grissom would feel bad, of course, and apologize, but Greg knew that his smile and acceptance would be so perfect, and that he would take it so well that Grissom's guilt would fade until it was safe to do it again and again.

Grissom wasn't a bad guy, Greg figured.  After all, he had no obligation.  Greg had shown up on his doorstep and Grissom had voluntarily given him a place to stay with no boundary lines.  No time limit.  However long he needed it.  Grissom wasn't bad, wasn't cruel, and wasn't infallible.  He was human, and it was so very easy, after a while, for humans to forget and move on.  Patterned behavior.

Greg was, over all other things, a scientist.  He understood and trusted patterns.

Lab work was like that.  Lab work was comforting.  He couldn't imagine why he'd really wanted to leave it behind.  He imagined, wistfully, that if he'd been content with where he was, he never would have ended up in a coma in the first place.  Melissa Sharpe never would have had a reason to be jealous of a lab tech with no field experience - - it was his wanting that had driven her over the edge.

He would have been safe.  He would have trusted.  His father never would have come back.

Hey, look.  Grissom himself.

"What have you got for me?"

Grissom had gotten into the habit lately of delivering samples personally.  It was the little extra touch that showed he cared and it was also the little extra touch that was driving Greg crazy.

_I'm okay! _he wanted to yell.  _I lived!  I made it!  So wipe that pitying look off your face!_

In his more rational moments, he knew that his very longing for that statement made it a lie.  If it was really true, he would have said it by now.  And the vision of him ripping the cords to the lab equipment out of the wall and screaming, at the top of his lungs, that he was absolutely fine, didn't lend much to a claim of sanity.  Besides, perfectly fine people didn't live with their bosses because the sight of an apartment and a reminder of who they used to be was too much to bear.  Perfectly fine people didn't live on someone else's goodwill and then ditch said benefactors when a friendly look of concern turned too personal and too intense.

Grissom was looking at him like he was something to be pinned to a board.

He said, louder, "What have you got for me?"

Grissom's head jerked to the side, as if he'd been slapped.  It was the abruptness of the motion that made Greg want to laugh, but lately, his laughs had come out sounding strange - - too long and too shrill.  When he laughed, Grissom looked at him like he was two steps from a breakdown.  He bottled the laughter.  Maybe that meant he was okay.

Yeah right.

"Kidnapping case.  You know the drill - - eliminate the expected, familial DNA," here, Grissom held up a set of samples, "and search for the foreign."

Funny, last time Grissom had handled a kidnapping, he hadn't been nearly that nice.  Greg seemed to remember his boss crashing his other samples into a wall, demanding that no other case be worked on.  He started to say something to that effect, but reminded himself of two facts:

Grissom was a nice guy, and he was supposed to be a nice guy, too.

He definitely _had _been one.  That was something he remembered pretty well.  He hadn't even tried to pressure Melissa Sharpe on their single date.  He'd been a gentleman completely, right up until the time she led him out into the alley and her boyfriend shoot him in the head - - _kicked _him, _busted _him in the face, and then _shot_, that abruptly severed feeling, with the warm, wet touch of blood going down his jaw.

"This goes first," he promised Grissom, smiling.  It felt like he was stretching the corners of his mouth with some obscenely painful dentist tool.  "I'll get to it right away."

_In other words, look how normal I am!  How well-adjusted!  Look how good I am at climbing right back on the horse, and oh, by the way, do you know exactly how it feels like to know that you're only alive because of an accident?  Do you know what it feels like to feel a bullet slide through bone and then burrow deeper?  Do you know that I panicked when I started going into blackness instead of into some really awesome light tunnel?_

He'd thought he was going to hell, there in that alleyway.

Hell was waking up to realize that he was supposed to be the same.

Grissom balanced the samples on his desk.  That look again, like Grissom wanted to dip him in formaldehyde and pin him to a board, and okay, that sounded worse than he'd meant it.

"I'm ordering pizza for tonight," Grissom said cautiously, as if Greg was going to start tearing his hair out at any moment.  "What kind do you like?"

"I don't care."

"Bullshit," Grissom said in a low, nearly pleasant tone.  "You used to care."

That plastic smile was getting harder and harder to maintain.  "Things _change_, Grissom."  He grabbed the samples and carted them over to another empty space.  Had to wait for the current tests to finish before he could start these ones, and the waiting was the worst.  He drummed his pen against the tabletop and hoped that Grissom would just leave.  But he'd been staying with Grissom for a week now, and he knew that it was unlikely.  He also knew that he was unlikely to leave again himself.

Good sign?  Bad sign?  He couldn't read himself and didn't understand his own symbols.

"I'm trying to help you, Greg."

They all said his name more now, like they were reminding themselves of who they were talking to.  Like he didn't _act _like Greg anymore, and they needed to stick a label on him to remember that he was.

"Great.  But that's not your job."

"What do you consider to be my job?"

"Read the description of a criminalist, Grissom.  'Analyzing your lab tech's every action' isn't likely to be listed anywhere in there.  But I think 'solving crimes' is, so you should probably get out there, and, you know, do that."

"We're going to talk about this when we get home."  Grissom shook his head as he left, like he was disappointed by something.

_Guess I'm pretty disappointing.  Dad always thought so, anyway, and don't they say that your boss becomes your father figure?_

His hands were suffocating in the latex, and he pressed them to his face, rubbing a hard line down his skin.  Grissom had called his townhouse "home" for both of them, just like Warrick, after two weeks, had conveniently forgotten that Greg didn't usually sleep on his couch.  It had been enough to make him run then - - he wished it was enough to make him run now.

Maybe if he did run - - if he headed not to any of the others but out of Vegas entirely - -

But he'd considered and rejected that idea before.  He did love them, and he didn't want so badly to leave them behind that he'd be willing to hurt them like that.

_I'm a good guy, _he thought desperately.  _I swear I am.  I don't say things just to hurt other people _- - except he had before and he would again.  His sarcasm had turned sour.

_I still belong here, right?_

**

Grissom got double-cheese, double-pepperoni.  Greg stopped at the grocery store on the way "home" and picked up two liters of Pepsi as a peace offering.  They ate on the sofa, plates on their knees, awkwardly positioned as far from each other as possible.  Greg looked at DNA textbooks while he ate.  It seemed a good a way as any to avoid conversation with Grissom, who had been giving him searching looks all night, as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab Greg by the hair and send him into therapy.

Finally, Grissom snatched the textbook away from him.  It fell to the floor and nearly rolled, thudding against the coffee table, cracking the spine, open to in-depth drawings of the double helix.

"I was _reading _that," he said before he could stop himself.

Grissom's gaze was intense and cold.  "You can read when we're done talking."

"When you're done lecturing, you mean."  He flinched as he heard himself.  When did he start talking like that to anyone, let alone Grissom?  Thoughts were fine, thoughts were caged behind him and no one had to hear him _think_, but saying it was something different.

Grissom had a tiny smear of tomato sauce across the back of his thumbnail.  Greg stared at that.

"You don't sleep.  You run away from everyone that offers you anything."

Damn.  He didn't think that they would have, but they must have all gotten together, pooled their resources, and figured out, each time, what made him leave.  He stayed silent.  The tomato sauce stayed on Grissom's thumb.

"You don't care about anything.  You work because it's a distraction."  
  


"And what do you  care about?"  Greg didn't look up.  He spoke downwards, to Grissom's hand.  No point in looking upwards - - no point in - - trying . . .

"Right now, you."

"That's mostly the point, Grissom."  He drove his eyes upwards until his gaze was pinned against Grissom's.  The heat coming from the normally iceberg blue eyes was baking his face.  He wished he'd kept his head down, but it was too late for that.  "Everybody cares about me right now, but eventually you'll stop, you know that.  I'm not safe.  I'm not going to be safe again.  When you trust that someone's not going to hurt you - - when you trust in good intentions - - you're asking for trouble."

"We wouldn't let anyone hurt you."

"Too late," Greg said.  "Somebody already did."

"Greg, is this even _about _Melissa Sharpe?"

It was a psychologist's question, and he resented it.  He'd expected it to come up sooner or later - - Nick had danced around the subject during their short roommate term - - but he had never expected it to come from Grissom, who always seemed disdainful of human emotions.  If Greg had a chemical imbalance, he would have talked to Grissom.

He said, harshly, "Are you saying that it's about my dad?"

"Is it?"

"How the fuck should I know?  You're the one who's doing such a great job of analyzing me, why don't you give it a shot?"

Grissom didn't appear unnerved by the curse.  His expression neither relaxed nor intensified.  "Fine.  I will.  I met you, and I met your father.  I think I can put a few of the pieces together."

"I'm going to enjoy this."

"No," Grissom said softly.  "You're not.  But you're going to stay here until I finish.  Then, if you want to run away again, go ahead."

_I probably SHOULD run away.  I'm good at that._

"You think about your father every day," Grissom began.  "You don't want to, but you do.  You tell yourself that you got away from him, so you're okay, and that you aren't him, so you're okay there, too, and you're right.  You did get away, and you are _nothing _like him.  But that doesn't mean that you're okay.  Maybe you were - - you weren't who you would have been if you hadn't had him as a father, but you were okay - - but not now.  Not anymore.  How am I doing?"

"Okay."  His lips felt numb.  He wanted another beer.  He poured himself a glass of Pepsi instead.

"Good."  Grissom pushed his plate onto the table.  The china squeaked against the glass.  "You should have been able to trust your father to take care of you, but you couldn't, and he didn't.  And you should have been able to trust the woman you were taking out for drinks, and you did, but she didn't deserve it.  She betrayed you.  Doesn't matter how long you knew her or how much you liked her, doesn't matter even if you hated her - - you didn't see any danger in taking her out and now you see danger all the time, in everyone.  Still good?"

"Yeah.  I guess."

"I'm detecting some uncertainty, Greg.  Would you like me to stop?"

"It's incredulity," Greg said honestly.  "I don't know how you figure these things out.  And yeah, I'd like you to stop, but you're not going to, are you?"

"No."

"Not even if I asked."

"No."

"So then why should I trust you?"

"Why doesn't matter, Greg.  You don't and that's all there is to it."  Grissom finally noticed the stain of tomato on his thumb and rubbed it off with a quick circular swipe.  "So now you know the truth - - that anyone could hurt you, at any time, if they wanted it badly enough and had a good enough plan.  It makes you nervous.  That's understandable.  It keeps you awake.  That's understandable, too."

"You're not piecing this together with my father yet."  He heard the bitter note of triumph in his voice.

"I'm getting there.  Here - - you thought you got away from him, but he came back.  You thought you were safe, but you weren't.  The last few months have been your expectations failing over and over again.  Nothing you thought was true really was.  He came back, while you were lying there, and you don't know what he said or what he did.  You don't know - - "  Grissom's voice caught, as if he was stuck in memories of his own.  "You don't know what it was like for us."

"Hate to be selfish, but not really thinking about you."

"Of course you're not.  It all comes back to you, Greg.  You can't help wondering what he told us, or what we realized.  Now you know some of it, but you were gone and you can't know all of it - - it's too late."

"You're saying I'm ignorant?"

"I'm saying that you're scared and that you remember too much for your own good.  And you won't let anyone help you."  Grissom's voice lowered.  "We watched you, you know.  You didn't wake up for so long that everyone started saying it was hopeless."

"Gee, thanks.  What a way to make me feel better."

Grissom's fingers tore into him, grabbing him by the shoulders with a touch that was not gentle in the slightest.  Their looks met again, and Greg felt his uncomfortable defiance squirming away from him, left adrift, faced with Grissom's seriousness.

"I thought about how it could turn out."

It was almost a whisper.

It was a confession.  Grissom used to be Catholic.

"I had to prepare myself, I thought.  No matter how you ended up, I had to know how I would react.  And I did.  I thought I rehearsed for everything, but I never thought that it would end like this."  
  


"We've already ended?"

"Parts of us.  Greg, you're not _listening_, and I don't know how to make you."

It was the desperation that made him pay attention.  Maybe Grissom had his own problems, after all.  In any case, this was, for the moment, about Grissom himself, not about Greg, and Greg was only too delighted to turn the spotlight over.  He said, quietly, "I'm listening."

"We were afraid.  I was afraid.  I didn't know how things would turn out.  I didn't know if you'd even live, Greg.  We talked like we knew you were going to wake up, but we didn't.  And then some miracle wakes you up.  Do you realize how lucky you've been, really?  In medical terms alone?  A flexible bullet and your own wake-up call?  Do you _know _the things I thought of?  Do you know what could have happened to you?  What things could have been like?"

He wanted to tear himself away from that desperation, wanted to say, _God, Grissom, what did you dream of?  What were you thinking about?  What were your possibilities?  _He did nothing.  He was frozen to the seat.  His plate fell with a clatter to the floor and broke neatly into four pieces.  Grissom didn't notice it.  His eyes were frenetic.

_What do you want, Grissom?  I can't give you absolution._

It complicated things.  He thought he was the only one who needed any help.

"I'm sorry," he said, wanting to get out of there.

"For what?"

"Everything."

Grissom let him go.  Greg's shoulders felt bruised, almost bloody.

"Then you really don't understand," Grissom said.  He sounded almost regretful.  "Pick that plate up off the floor, Greg, but wear some gloves.  I don't want you cutting your hands."  He rose and crossed the room to go to his bed, and stopped in the doorway.  "If you're gone when I wake up, I'll understand.  But I won't like it.  I don't have to like that."

"Are you asking me to stay?"  
  


"Yes," Grissom said, finally.  "I just want to help you."

He wasn't Grissom's penance, but he nodded anyway, picked up the pieces of shattered china, went to bed, and was still there the next day.


	4. Be Nice to People

Okay, I have to apologize for the longer-than-usual absence.  I had relatives over for the Easter weekend, and I was very busy playing gracious hostess, and then, on Sunday, when I looked over this chapter, I realized something very important - - it sucked.  A lot.  So I had to rewrite it.

Again, I'm sorry about the dry spell.  We should return to the regular, once-every-other-day posting schedule now, and I hope you enjoy the revised chapter, as it is has crazy Greg, unseeing Warrick, and snarky Hodges.

**

**Chapter Four: Be Nice to People**

******

They didn't talk about what had happened the night before.  Greg warmed up pizza for breakfast, washed it down with orange juice, and made small-talk with Grissom before calmly excusing himself, going to the bathroom, dropping to his knees, and throwing everything up.  He washed his hands afterwards, turned on the fans in the bathroom, and Grissom didn't ask any questions.  They rode to work in silence until Greg turned up the radio until it almost shattered Grissom's speakers.  Grissom turned it down.  Greg waited five minutes before turning it right back up again.  He got away from Grissom the second he entered the lab, eager to wash the sheen of sweat off his forehead and the taste of vomit from his mouth.  He was shaking, and not just his hands.

Hodges was the first one to notice anything.  "Sanders, if you're going to catch the flu, you could at least do the rest of us the courtesy of staying home."

He didn't think he had the flu.  He had a vague memory of high school health courses.  Something about stress-related ailments.  "Don't tell anybody, Hodges, okay?"  He was surprised by how pathetic that sounded, like he was pleading.  "I don't think what I've got is contagious."

Hodges looked him up and down with a dispassionate glare.

"Something about that thing with your coma?" he asked finally.

Greg didn't know whether or not he could laugh at that.  He curled his hands into fists at his side.

"Yeah.  Something about that thing," he said.

Hodges sniffed and spun his cup of coffee around.  "As long as I don't have to worry about it.  It's your problem, not mine."

_Never thought I'd agree with him.  Too bad no one else thinks that way._  He thanked Hodges with a slightly shivering nod, drowned the rest of his coffee, and beat feet back into his lab.  The machines surrounding him gave a warm hum as he sat down in the chair.  He knew it was just his ears adjusting so he could hear it, but it still sounded like he was being welcomed home.  A gentle, relived smile broke out over his face.  The lab was better than Grissom's townhouse.  Safer.  More secure.  And no worries of DNA textbooks cracking against the table.  No china shards to pick up in the mornings.

He felt better after a few hours had gone by, and even managed, around two in the morning, to get hungry.  He was debating the respective merits of pizza with Archie versus Chinese takeout with Jacqui when Warrick dropped by and offered to buy.

"I'm climbing the walls," Warrick said easily, "and you look like you could use a break.  Hey, I'll even get you real food - - none of that takeout crap you lab rats eat half the time."

Greg was both amused and gratified by the offer, and happy that his mind didn't immediately bulk at the idea.  "Sure.  Let me clock out."

Warrick shook his head.  "Already done.  I checked you out with Grissom.  He says it's fine."

"How'd you know I'd come with you?  Maybe I had previous plans.  Secret, dangerous, covert plans that don't involve going out to dinner with you."  The banter was making him feel a little unbalanced.  The sensation of being back in the groove of things was exhilarating, but dangerous - - something like skydiving, or standing at the very edge of a precipice.

"My offers are impossible to turn down."

They took Warrick's car and talked, albeit a little awkwardly, on the way to the restaurant.  He was starting to remember why Warrick had been the easiest to live with - - no questions, no comments except when necessary.  It was almost easy to feel alive again.  They pulled into the parking lot of a small, neat building labeled as the Flying Skillet - - which Greg duly commented on - - and got into a booth almost immediately.  The smells of cheap vinyl and Formica swallowed him.

"I'm thinking about a burger," Warrick said.  "Something huge, charbroiled, and covered in bacon and onions.  Portobello mushrooms, too."

"Yuck."

"Not a mushroom fan?"

"Not an onion fan," Greg said, studying the menu.  "I'm going the way of a BLT."

The waitress arrived and took drink orders.  Greg's stomach felt fine, but he took the cautious route and got water with lemon.  Warrick ordered an iced tea and exchanged polite flirtation with the young woman.  Greg looked at her - - he'd barely noticed before, being focused on his menu - - but she was pretty, a neat, petite auburn-headed young woman in her early twenties.

Pretty.  Like to get him a look at some of those epithelials.

He thought of Melissa Sharpe, and his napkin crumpled in his hand.  He found himself staring at it, like some other person had crushed it.

He said to Warrick, "Gotta go the bathroom - - be back in a minute."

The bathroom smelled like grease and lemon cleanser.  He didn't want to throw up again, so he stood over the sink of a long moment, shuddering.  He splashed cold water on his face, working quickly in case Warrick got curious and decided that a certain DNA tech was too unstable as of recently to be left alone.  His face felt frigid, and he stared at himself in the mirror, watching droplets fall down his face and cling to his eyebrows and eyelashes.  He blinked water out of his eyes.  Couldn't tell if those were tears or not, but he hoped they weren't, because he'd cried too much lately.

"Not very manly," Greg said to his reflection.

Warrick entered two minutes later, under the oh-so-obviously bogus pretext of washing his hands.

"You okay?"

Greg smiled.  He'd dried his face and there was no sign of any problem.  "Me?  I'm just fine."

"You ran out of there like your shoes were on fire."

"That actually happened once."

Warrick didn't look like he believed him.  "Are you sure you're fine?"

_Be nice to people, _Greg reminded himself.

"Yeah.  One hundred percent."

Warrick smiled uneasily.  "I ordered your BLT.  The waitress is throwing on a side of tomato soup - - she said you looked pale."

"And, what?  She thinks the color of the soup is going to seep from my stomach into my pores?  Because, if it is, I'd much rather order clam chowder.  The side-effects wouldn't be as . . . orange."

Warrick's smile steadied.  He looked like he'd just stepped out into the sun.  "You really do sound fine, you know that?  You sound happy."

Greg hadn't realized that he might have been upsetting them before.  He hadn't wanted that.  Hadn't cared, but hadn't wanted it, nonetheless.  He thought he might have been annoying Grissom, but the idea that his sadness had somehow permeated through the lab hadn't occurred to him.  He still couldn't trust, but he felt that he could pretend.

_I can fake it.  They'll be happy if they think I'm happy._

"I feel happy," he lied, stretching his smile.  He didn't want to go too far.  He tried to remember what a genuine expression looked like.  It had been a while since he'd had one.  He played the act out as they walked back to their table, practicing with ease the art of being the old Greg.  He summoned up words to describe this role: geeky.  Energetic.  Verbose.  He chattered brightly.

Greg sipped at his lemon water.  Warrick closed his lips around his straw, but it did nothing to disguise his widening grin.

"You're really okay," Warrick said in amazement.  "Damn.  We've been walking on eggshells around you."

_Hey, I've been walking on eggshells around me, too.  But just because I panic when I see a beautiful stranger - - just because I can't seem to feel any better - - just because it's easier to be around Hodges than anyone else - - just because a late-night conversation about trust ruins me in the morning - - that doesn't mean that I'm crazy._

_Just getting there._

"Aw, you really haven't, have you?"

He tried to smile bashfully.  Warrick seemed to respond correctly.

If lying was that easy, Greg had missed his calling as an actor.

"All of us.  Even Grissom.  I gotta tell you, man, we all thought you were going to lose it.  Going, going, maybe even gone.  You had us worried."

"I'm not worrying you now, am I?"

"No," Warrick said, squeaking his finger along the glass.  "You aren't.  As long as you're okay - - I like this.  I like having you back to normal.  Grissom's going to be relieved.  I told him that you'd start trusting people again pretty soon."

_Pretty soon?  Maybe never._

_Pretend.  Be nice to people.  Warrick is your friend, and even if he can hurt you, he doesn't want to.  Not right now, anyway.  He's buying you lunch.  The waitress is a pretty waitress and nothing else.  She's not Melissa.  She's not going to try for a second chance._

He took a long drink of water.  It was nice to think that he might never have to feel the cold steel of a gun nuzzling into his temple again.  That was what he remembered - - the cold.  Even through his hair, he could feel how freezing it was, like Trey had put the damn thing in a freezer before going out to kill him.  And how warm the bullet had been as it scorched through him.  The gunpowder residue that would have been sloppily sprayed around his ear.

Who had processed him at the hospital?  What had they gathered?

These were the wrong questions to ask Warrick.  Nick would have answered out of understanding - - no doubt Nick had wanted to ask a few questions of his own when Nigel Crane was caught - - and Grissom would have answered out of guilt.  Sara and Catherine might have answered, after a while, but he wouldn't have asked them, and he wasn't going to ask Warrick, who finally seemed so confident that Greg was normal again.

The food arrived.  It was warm.  The bacon was crisp and lined with strips of fat.  Greg got his soup after all, whether he wanted it or not.  He made himself smile at the waitress.

"You okay?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I'm fine.  Just a little queasy before."

Nice girl.  Probably.  Not the kind who'd want him dead.

_I have some screwed-up criteria for dating, _he thought, sickly amused.  _Some guys are leg-men, some are ass-men - - I think Nick's a foot-guy - - and I used to be a man who liked his skin cells - - but I think this new "non-homicidal" quirk might be just what I've been looking for._

He tore into his sandwich.  Carnivore.  Sara would be ashamed of him.

He didn't look at Warrick when he ate, and though he knew that before, he would have snitched away a few of the other man's French fries, he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.  There was too big of a gulf between who he was and who he had been - - a gulf as wide and long as the Pacific, and without the desperate beauty.

Greg's girlfriend in college had told him, when they broke up, that she had fallen for someone else.  Greg had tried to impress her, gain her back with outlandishly romantic gestures and pretty words, but nothing had worked.  Nothing had even seemed to register.  She'd said that she liked the quiet type.

_I'm nothing now if not the quiet type.  Think she'd take me back?_

He was halfway through a conversation when he realized that he had no idea what he was saying, but found that he could continue anyway.  He wondered when being himself became a rote act that he didn't have to think about, like breathing, and wondered why he didn't have more trouble acting cheerful when his thoughts were anything but.

Warrick looked pleased that Greg was fine.

_Be nice to people._

His stomach curled in sudden protest against either the food or the thought, but smiling suppressed the gag reflex wonderfully, and he was grinning so widely that Warrick must have thought that everything was completely fine.

_Maybe I'll even be able to fool Grissom tonight._

He wanted to laugh, and did, but pretended that it was at something Warrick had said.

It was just all so crazy.


	5. Just Be

**Notes: 1)** to RainbowsnStars - - The thing about Sara calling Nathan to Vegas was part of the "Blood in the Water" summary.  Don't worry - - no one's calling Nathan back to Vegas.  They hate him and want him very, very far away.  So have no fear.  **2) **I like angst.  A lot.  That's kind of a side-note, but it's also vaguely important, I promise.  And, **3)** For the record, I also like this chapter.  It has Grissom, the return of the tuna noodle casserole, grocery shopping, and a few other things.  And also, these notes would make far more sense at the _end _of the chapter, so you should probably read them again afterwards. 

******

**Chapter Five: Just Be**

******

Greg was starting to wonder if Grissom knew how to make anything other than tuna noodle casserole.  When they weren't ordering takeout, it was tuna.  They sat in silence at the table, Greg picking the layers apart, covering his fork in cheese sauce.  He'd hoped that Grissom had heard something good about his new "normal" attitude from Warrick, but when Grissom had driven him home, the older man's eyes had been dark and he had not said a word.  No attempt had been made at dinner conversation, either.  Not that Grissom was the most talkative of guys, but lately, his boss seemed to be trying to reach out to him.  Not that night.

Greg pressed his fork down on a wet noodle.  It sank into the pasta.

"I'm sick of tuna," he said to fill the silence.

"Then do your own shopping," Grissom said harshly.  "From what I've heard, you've been doing really well with restaurants lately, so you shouldn't have a problem branching out to grocery stores."

Greg spent a few seconds deciphering that and didn't like the outcome.  "Excuse me, are you _jealous_ that I went out to lunch with Warrick and did fine?  My mental health is only supposed to improve when I'm around _you_, is that it?"

"You aren't fine, Greg."

It had been a while since someone had noticed that.

"I went out.  I ordered lunch.  I ate.  I talked with Warrick."

"Don't you _dare_ give me some kind of selective history, Greg.  I had the whole story.  Warrick didn't know what he was telling me, but I know what I heard.  You ran into the bathroom and when you came out, you were acting like you'd never even heard of a coma."

"I get it.  You resent me getting better."

"What I resent," Grissom said, "is you thinking that you can fake your way through some kind of recovery.  You're not all right.  I know it.  And if you think that Warrick won't realize it, you're delusional."

"That fits me to a tee, boss.  Delusional is right."

"That's exactly what I mean."  At last, Grissom's voice softened.  "Do you really think that we're all so eager to have you back to normal that we're willing to put on blinders and not see that you still have problems?"

Oh God.  He was going to start crying.

_No way.  No way am I going to cry in front of Gil Grissom.  I'll get tears on his shirt and he'll get pissed.  Or, even worse, he'll get that comforting look he has right now, times ten.  With my current luck, he'll pat me on the back and tell me to have a good cry.  But - - he saw.  He sees.  He gets that I'm not who I was and he doesn't care - -_

Crying now.

Grissom didn't pull him forwards into some kind of awkward hug.  He let Greg sag his shoulders forward and tuck his face away into his hands.  Greg sobbed for almost a minute, feeling disgusted and pathetic, and the only sign that Grissom was there at all was the sudden, steady pressure of a hand on his shoulder.  When Greg wiped his eyes and straightened, Grissom withdrew his hand.

"Feel any better?"

It sounded like a polite inquiry, nothing more.

_But he noticed.  He noticed that I wasn't fine._

It meant something.  That Grissom had noticed meant more than any tone of voice.  It should have been enough to make him run away again - - but it wasn't.  Maybe he really was getting better.  Just a little.  Just enough.  Maybe there had been some sort of improvement, for Grissom's kindness to be a good thing instead of a bad one.

"Yeah," Greg said.  His voice was thick.  He wiped furiously at his eyes.  "Just a little."

"Honesty.  Thank you."

"What now?"

"Now?  I'm hoping that you'll answer a few questions for me while we finish eating, and I'll answer whatever you want.  And then we'll go grocery shopping, since you're so damn sick of my food.  But, so there's no problems at the checkout - - you're paying."

"Grocery shopping.  Grissom, it's, like, two in the morning."

"We live in Vegas, Greg," Grissom said.  "Now eat your casserole."

"It's cold."

"It wouldn't be, if you'd been eating it earlier."

_I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, "You sound like my father," but he's never sounded anything remotely like my father.  Dad would have said something along the lines of, "Shut your smart mouth," or maybe, "Then you don't have to eat at all."  He sounds like what my father should have sounded like._

Greg took a tentative bite of casserole.  It was cold.  And the cheese stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"You wanted to ask me something?"

"Several things," Grissom said patiently.  "One - - How long are you going to stay?"

"I don't know."

"Honesty, Greg.  But also helpfulness.  If you don't know, guess."

He picked the longest estimate and tried to bounce it off Grissom's expression for some kind of reaction.  "Well, maybe a couple of months."

Grissom only nodded.  "That's fine.  Two - - Are you going to talk to anyone?  In a professional capacity, I mean.  You could see some kind of a therapist -  -"

"No.  Definitely not."

He couldn't see himself trying to explain his entire life to someone paid to listen.  The thought made him cringe.  All it would turn into was some kind of elaborate explanation about how his father was somehow controlling his life, and, besides, there were exonerating circumstances that he wouldn't be able to explain to a psychologist.  He'd never be able to tell a perfect stranger why he knew, when he returned from the hospital, that his friends would be willing to let him stay.  Never be able to explain how he wasn't at all surprised that Grissom could see that he'd been playacting an old, comfortable role.  Far too difficult to convey in words how he had to delicately balance the line between affection and danger in his new interpretations of his personal life.

"In that case," Grissom continued, unaware of Greg's musings, "you'll talk to me.  No trying to lie, either."

"You hate talking to people."

"You're not just anyone, Greg.  You're part of my team.  I make exceptions, on occasion.  If I'm not there, talk to one of the others, but I want you to be able to communicate."

"Sure."

"You're lying again.  You aren't sure at all."

Greg's smile, that time, was genuine.  "You're very good at this."

"That's why I'm your boss.  Greg, the casserole is not going to finish itself.  Now, three - - Why did you run away from the waitress?"  When Greg only stabbed at a piece of tuna and didn't answer, Grissom said gently, "I have some ideas, you know, but - - communication.  You're going to have to tell me."

"She reminded me of Melissa."  Greg stifled a laugh in his fist.  That unwelcome, jagged hilarity was overwhelming his senses again.  "Which is so ridiculous, man, you know that, right?  It has to mean I'm crazy,  Like, what am I going to do, freak out whenever I see a beautiful woman who isn't Cath or Sara?  It's insane."

"It's not insane.  It's natural.  It'll stop."

"What if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll work around it.  Four - - last one - - what are you waiting for?"

_For you to give up on me.  I'm waiting for you to say that enough is enough and I should be better by now.  I'm waiting for the day where I make you mad enough to kick me out instead of taking me grocery shopping.  For when I can stop being so nervous and go back to being sure that there isn't one person in the world who wants to save me._

He swallowed.  His throat was dry, and he took another drink of beer.

Grissom always knew when he was lying, so he simply didn't say anything at all.  Grissom's sigh came across the table, heavy and dismayed, but not disappointed.

"Three out of four," Grissom said.  "That much, at least."  He stood and pushed his chair back under the table with one smooth motion.  "Finish eating, and we'll go."

Greg obediently finished, even though the cheese had started to form a skin over the noodles.  It tasted flavorless, but he forced it down, for Grissom's sake.  He might have to do some of the cooking from now on.  He could get recipes from Nick, who would probably be willing to shell them out as long as his reputation as a macho-man wasn't spoiled.

He found a sheet of paper and started making a list.  They might as well do this right.

**

Grissom drove them both to a twenty-four hour store at the edge of town.  It was quiet and well-lit.  Greg walked beside the cart with one hand on the side, feeling stupid and childish, but not wanting to go out of distance.  Grissom seemed relieved, more than anything else, by Greg's refusal to separate from him - - he had the feeling that if he did try to branch off in search of some exclusive item, Grissom wouldn't say anything, but he'd be anxious about it.  Grissom was worried about him.  A stab of pride, so fierce that it almost made him sick, came with that thought.

"Powdered donuts.  Sugar-coated cereals.  Greg, did you put anything healthy on this list?"

"No," Greg said simply.  "I've got a good metabolism."

Grissom gave him a sharp glance.  "I don't.  We're going to have to get a few other things."

"I want some fruit."

"Fruit's fine," Grissom said.  Greg watched in amusement as his boss carefully blocked the list with his elbow so he could cross off the as-of-yet-unfound Oreos and Pepperidge Farm milanos.  "What kind do you want?  Apples?  Oranges?"

"Star-fruit, kiwi, pineapples, and plantain."

Grissom shook his head, bemused.  "I should have guessed that you'd choose the outrageous.  What can you make with plantain, anyway?"  
  


"Hell if I know, but they're cool.  Like bananas, only not."

He felt almost giddy - - a little lightheaded to go along with his lighter heart.  It was okay.  They were in a grocery store.  He was with Grissom.  No one was going to come after him with a gun in the middle of a grocery store, even if it was three in the morning.  Admittedly, going grocery shopping with his boss and bitching about the proper uses of plantain in fruit salad couldn't quite be considered normal, but it was - - okay.  It felt safe.

It felt better than anything else had felt lately.

Grissom stocked the cart efficiently, maneuvering eggs, bread, and fruit to the proper places.  Greg sighed in attempt at drama as his beloved junk food was buried under items with nutritional value.

His hand tightened around the cart.  He thought that he might be able to hear his own heartbeat.

_I'm here.  I'm alive.  Nothing bad is going to happen._

He found himself grinning and kicking his shoes against the tiling, scuffing his toes and not caring.

"You seem cheerful," Grissom said cautiously, unwilling to be fooled if it was some kind of act.  He gave Greg a thorough inspection that made him want to squirm.  Grissom's mouth stretched suddenly, and it took Greg a few seconds to realize that it was one of Grissom's rare smiles.  "Not acting.  Actually cheerful.  It's good to see."

"Talking helped," Greg said.  "I'm sorry about - - "

"Don't apologize."

He didn't, but he did grab a few regular bananas and stack them next to the plantain.  He even let Grissom get away with crossing off a few more sugar-frosted items on the sly.  The giddiness had faded away, and he was happy about that, because it had been unexpected and somehow dangerous, like standing on the sharp edge of a precipice, or taking up skydiving with a torn parachute.  In its place was a small, shy feeling that was less recognizable but more welcome - - contentment.

He paid for the groceries over Grissom's objection that he'd been joking.

"I don't pay you rent, remember?  Besides, more than half of this stuff is mine, even without all those cookies you crossed off and didn't get."  He smiled at Grissom's pained expression.  "Yeah, I noticed that. I told you I'd be good in the field."

_Melissa wanted to be in the field_, a quiet, sneaking voice whispered.  _That's why she thought you had to die, so she could be the one to get the promotion._

He shook it off with a quick, defiant slash of his head.  Grissom was, thankfully, gathering groceries into the cart, and missed the motion, but the checkout clerk gave him a puzzled glance.  He twitched his mouth at her in reply - - it couldn't quite be called a smile, but since it wasn't just an action chosen to suppress the urge to throw up, he was satisfied.

Grissom looked sheepishly at the number of groceries.  Properly bagged, there wasn't enough room in the cart.  Greg took the remaining bags, wanting to get away from the cashier's prying gaze.

"I'll run these out to the car," he said.  "Give me your keys, okay?"

Grissom slipped them to him and Greg nodded, heading out into the silky dark.  They were farther from the city's lights out here, and the warm air of the desert wrapped around him, balmy and secretive.  It was almost relaxing.  He moved through the few isolated cars, squinting to see.  A few of the store's lights were malfunctioning, casting a stuttering, weak yellow light over the parking lot.

Peaceful.

He spotted the Tahoe down by the pharmacy end of the store, and shifted the keys into his free hand.  The bags were weighing down his arms, almost cutting through his hands- - or so it felt - - and it would be such a relief to shed them into the trunk like old snakeskin.

Something cold pressed against the back of his neck.

His ears thudded with the sudden rush of blood.  The touch was unmistakable.  Maybe before, he would have been able to confuse it with something else, but now, such an error was impossible to make.  He'd been too intimate with this touch.

This - - cold, steel kiss to the skin just below his hair.

"Don't move," a voice said softly, huskily.  "Stay still."

No worries.  The icy touch of the gun to his neck was freezing him to the ground.  He couldn't think.  Couldn't breathe.  No words seemed to make it from his brain to his lips - - or even to the rest of him.  He was numb with shock, his circulation impossibly slow.  There didn't seem to be enough desert in the world to warm him.  A fresh burst of gooseflesh rose on his bare arms.

He thought, sickened, _I'm going to die._

_I'm going to die again._


	6. Stutter

**Notes: **My surreal chapter!  *displays proudly*  And thank you all for the lovely feedback on the last chapter - - even if some of it was a little bit homicidal.  Hey, I told you I'd let Greg survive this one, didn't I?  I wouldn't lie about something like that!

******

**Chapter Six: Sputter**

******

_When Greg was seven, he built a toy plane out of balsa wood and flew it in his backyard.  It was fragile and on its second flight, the wind snapped it in two before it could even touch the ground.  He cradled the splintered wood in his hands for a moment, feeling sad, and not really knowing why.  It wasn't as if the plane was anything particularly special - - there were a million more of them in the house in their separate pieces, waiting to be assembled - - and he had built and effectively destroyed things before.  His father was always complaining about his carelessness that way._

_Eventually, he realized that it was the lack of flight that chafed at him - - seeing the delicate plane, almost butterfly-like in its ability to soar, cut down._

The voice was deep, almost heavy in its tones.  "Hand me your wallet."

He wanted to, but his arms were stiff tree-branches, chained to his sides.  He felt like frost had grown on his lips to prevent speech.

_In New York wintertime, he'd licked the jungle gym as a dare and tasted the frosted steel, hating the pain as his tongue tore away.  He'd gained some kind of respect that day, however - - the geeky kid with the unruly hair had been brave enough to lick the frozen metal, and it was a stupid thing to be known for, but everyone seemed to like him better for it._

The man behind him sounded impatient when he spoke again.  "Give me your wallet.  Don't make me blow your fucking head off."

How warm would the bullet be when it slipped inside his skull?

Would he be able to feel the blood before he died?

Before, the gun had been at his temple, and the bullet had been blisteringly hot, like a fire set inside his brain, and he had seen nothing but black, and his first thought had not been of death but blindness.  He'd stared and seen nothing.  He hadn't felt any blood, and as he had slid against the wall, his fingers scraping against the bricks, he had thought of hell.

_Graduation day from high school.  Kissing his girlfriend on the cheek to tell her goodbye - - they were heading to opposite ends of the country.  Shaking hands with various acquaintances and friends, swearing to keep in touch and doubting that either of them would.  The sweet, summery scent of the grass.  His father's absence and his own impending stay at Stanford._

The wallet fell from his fingers and dropped to the ground - - a soft clatter of leather.

It was scooped up by an anonymous hand, safely enclosed in a black glove.  No prints.  No witnesses.

The gun didn't move from the base of his skull.

Greg tried to talk, tried to even beg for his life, if that would produce some positive result, but the only thing that came out was a weak, scared whisper, "Grissom . . ."

_His third day at CSI, one of Grissom's spiders had gotten out and Greg ended up being the one to retrieve it, smiling proudly and a bit nervously as the tarantula crawled over his arm.  Grissom had taken off his glasses and thanked him, looking a bit puzzled at the appearance of the new lab tech, with his out-of-control appearance, calmly bearing the lost spider.  The touch of that many legs to his skin had tickled._

The gun jabbed at him, and for a second, he recoiled forward, and away from its touch, almost falling, thinking that it had fired.  A blinding pain erupted near his jaw - - not a gunshot, but the butt, striking the side of his face.  The bone didn't crack, but it popped out of position with a sick _thrusting _noise, and his teeth slid over his tongue, reaping a sudden line of hot blood that filled his mouth.

He spit a mouthful onto the parking lot as feet thundered behind him.  Too many feet.  Too many moments.  Too many seconds and too far away.

Too little; too late.

"Greg."

_Grissom.  I brought you your tarantula back, remember?_

A swift touch of a hand to his swelling jaw, and the blood falling from his mouth.

_You thanked me.  Said that everyone else was afraid of it.  I didn't want to tell you that I was a little scared, too, because it was the first time you had anything nice to say._

"My God, Greg."

_You sound worried.  I'm sorry._

_Sorry-sorry-sorry.  You have to believe me; I'm so sorry._

"What happened?  Tell me.  Tell me what happened, okay?"

_I died.  I'm dying.  I'll die._

_Can't think.  Can't breathe, Grissom, and it's way too late for you to try and save me._

Fade to black.

**

The rest of it was hazy, assembled from pieces of conversations he heard when he was busy wavering in and out of consciousness.  There was no order, no sense, rhyme, or reason.  He heard the dialogue but could not connect it, and his only deliberate thought was that it reminded him of when he had gotten a bad case of the flu when he was fourteen, and had stayed in bed for almost a week, staring at his ceiling, sweating through his sheets, seeing mirages drift over the molding.  Bits of his father had worked his way into the fever dreams.  At one point, Nathan Sanders had rested a cold washrag against his son's forehead, and Greg remembered him whispering, "Get better," but something about the whisper had spoken of a command instead of a concern.

Someone's hand on his.

The sound of someone crying.

Cotton tearing.

A needle, sharp and silver, sliding into his skin.

"You need to calm down, Gil."

"I can't.  You weren't there.  I heard him screaming, Catherine."

The sweet haze of drugs.

The clear, antiseptic smell of too-clean hospital sheets.

"He wouldn't stop fighting me.  I could barely keep him still.  Most of those bruises are from trying to hold him while he was thrashing around.  It was like a seizure, he just - - wouldn't stop.  God, Catherine.  His eyes were wide open and I don't think he saw anything.  He just looked . . . desperate.  He kept lashing out at everyone.  None of the paramedics could get him to stop until someone got a damn syringe in there.  I've never seen someone . . . terrified, like that."

A flashback memory of groceries spilled on the ground - - his own, and then Grissom's, as the cart fell over with a clanging noise and an array of squashed fruits filled his vision with their bright colors.  Some of his blood splashed over the smooth skin of a peach.  His hand struck against a box of Lucky Charms and popped through the painted cardboard.  Tiny marshmallows glued themselves to the sweat between his fingers.

Sara's dark eyes as she stood over him.

The smell of Catherine's shampoo.

"What happened, man?"

"I don't know, Nicky.  He couldn't tell me."

Sunlight falling in cross-patches over his bed.

Nick said that they hadn't ever wanted to pull his curtains closed.

But this wasn't a coma, this time.  This time, he was dead, wasn't he?

"Do you want to call him?"

"His father?  Are you kidding me?"

Third voice.  "I don't want that bastard anywhere near here.  Don't call."

He was aware of his own breathing - - the steady rise and fall of his chest.  He saw the paisley pattern of the sheets move with him.  Someone was holding his hand.  Catherine?  Grissom was standing by his bed, eyes intent and darkly focused.  A coffee cup, crushed, lay on the table next to him, a pale smear of whipped cream across the lid.

Grissom said, "Greg?  Can you hear me?"

It was like having tunnel vision.  He tried to nod and was swept away by another tide.

Someone was praying.  He thought it might be Nick - - yes, that had to Nick's voice, warm and broken, rising and falling over the prayer.

He was praying for mercy.

Nick was praying for him.

Did he really want to be God's responsibility?

"His wallet's gone.  We think it might have been a robber.  Just wanted money."

"Fuck," someone said in a shivering voice, the word flat and bare in the silence.  "How could they even have guessed?  What were the odds?  Why did it have to be him?  Why then?  He was getting better.  We were just going _grocery shopping_, for God's sake."

A doctor's voice; smooth, modulated.  "I understand that this is a setback to Mr. Sanders's mental recovery - - "

Sara: "You don't understand anything.  You can't possibly."

Someone else said, "He doesn't deserve any of this."

"We know that," Grissom said.  "We talked about it already."

Everything seemed sepia-toned, likes something out of an old cowboy movie, the kind that Nick might like.  A spaghetti western.  Catherine was smoothing the sheets around him, and he touched her arm to thank her.  Her skin felt so cold.  Maybe she was just as dead as he was.  He didn't want Catherine to be like him, though, and the thought made tears rise upwards.

"Don't cry, sweetie," she said, like he was a child.  Her hand, warmer, brushed against his eyes and scattered teardrops over his brow.

Greg tumbled backwards into sleep.

"Do you remember when your tarantula got out?"

"Yeah.  You found it."

"I wanted to impress you."

"You impress me, Greg.  All the time."

"Something's wrong with me, isn't it?"

The sunlight was warm on his skin.  It felt almost like the frost was melting away from his lips, and he was being pulled into some bright oblivion.  The images grew clearer.

_Hail Mary, full of grace._

"Grissom, are you praying?"

_Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death._

_Some of us are already dead._

**

The full-color of the world came back later, and the first thing he saw was his own window - - the glaze, and, indeed, open shades.  Light landed on his face, warming him.  He could see a tiny piece of the Strip from where he was lying.  The room was utterly quiet and still.  Grissom was in the chair by his bed, reading a battered paperback.  It looked like a dime novel.  He'd never figured Grissom for the fiction type, but things were always so unexpected.

Grissom must have seen him, because the book wilted to his lap.  "Greg?  Are you awake?"

His lips felt cold.  "I'm awake."

"You - - you were delirious earlier."

_I remember.  I remember more than you know._

"I wasn't nervous when I was looking for the car," he said.  It was hard to talk.  His throat was dry and every word felt like it was flaying him raw.  "It was nice outside.  Warm.  I wasn't even thinking that something could happen, but it did."

Grissom's eyes were so very distant.  So very sympathetic.  He reached one hand forward.

"I'm so sorry . . ."

"Don't touch me."  He pulled away, his body sliding over the mattress.  His hip banged against the metal frame.  It sent a tremor through him.  "I knew," he said, his voice rising in pitch until he sounded almost shrill, "I knew that I wasn't safe.  You all told me to trust.  To let go.  To stop walking on eggshells because no one was going to hurt me.  You all promised and no one was there."

"I found you bleeding," Grissom said, stricken.  "You were on your knees and you were bleeding.  You were screaming.  You scared me."

"What did I say?"

A slight, painful pause.  "That you were dying."

"You're such a liar," Greg said, and turned away, like he was tired of the conversation.  "That's not what I said at all and you know it.  Where's your honesty now, Grissom?"

He heard the muffled sound of Grissom swallowing.  "You said that you were dead.  The rest of it was just screaming."

"Like an animal, I bet," Greg said, and he could hear the satisfaction in his own voice.  "I probably sounded just like some kind of trapped animal."  He looked at his hospital gown and thought he could make out the tracks of a needle on his upper arm from all the sedatives.  They'd even stuck him like an animal, too.  "So tell me the truth - - is this what you think I deserve?

"Is this what you were praying for?"


	7. Prayer, Penance, and Fault

******

**Chapter Seven: Prayer, Penance, and Fault**

******

He sat in the chair by the window, watching the sun drop low over the obstructed horizon.  Beams of orange light crisscrossed through the maze of buildings on the Strip.  The chair wasn't even real wood, he thought dismally.  It was some kind of junky plastic reproduction, and cold under his fingertips.  Greg dragged his thumbnail along the false grain, and watched in bleak amusement as it left a wavy trail, like a line in a bar of soap.  His father always got onto him when he was a kid for carving up the soap in the bathroom with his thumb, striping and checking the bars aimlessly as he showered.  He had to cut his nails - - they were getting kind of ragged.

He knew that Grissom was behind him.  He knew that Grissom had been behind him for the last two hours.

"You want to hear a joke?" he asked, not turning around.

Grissom didn't sound surprised at the sudden start of a conversation.  "Sure."

"A guy goes to his boss and asks for a couple of weeks off, okay?  He wants to get his head together.  Because this guy has some disorganized shit in his life, if you know what I mean.  So the boss - - because he's a relatively nice guy - - says, okay, that's fine, go right ahead, and if you make your way to Hawaii, bring me back a couple of hula girls.  Something like that.  Are you following me?"

"I'm following you, Greg."

"So the guy thanks his boss and hits the road.  And he stays gone a year, and that's kind of a problem, get it?"

"Because he only asked for a few weeks off."

"Exactly.  You're sharp, Grissom.  Surprised you don't cut yourself."  He smiled viciously and dragged his thumb down the arm of the chair again.  His nail tore almost to the quick.  He pressed hard and watched a rosy line of blood form.  "Guy comes back.  The boss - - good guy or not - - really just wants to know where he's been.  I mean, it's not good business etiquette to just disappear like that.  A person could lose his job that way."

"What does the boss say?"

"Right.  Keep me on top of things.  I'm glad I have you for that."

He sounded so hateful, even to himself.

"The boss wants to know where he's been.  The guy says, 'I wanted a couple of weeks off to find myself.'  And the boss says, 'How on earth did you get so lost?'"  He waited for a few seconds.  "You're supposed to laugh, Grissom.  That was the punch-line."

"I didn't think it was funny," Grissom said stiffly.

"No.  I guess you wouldn't.  It's not exactly a big hit at parties."

"Do you feel lost, is that it?"

"You don't have a clue what I feel," he said softly.  The sun was too bright, but going blind would have been better than seeing Grissom, so he just screwed his eyes shut and continued to face the window.  "There was a gun at the back of my head.  I guess you know that."

"Distinctive bruising above your collar."

"So you know the evidence.  Big deal.  You know, Grissom, the more this kind of thing happens to me, the more and more I start to think that what we do for a living is crap."  He chuckled without any humor.  "Even if you found this guy, what are you doing to do?  He mugged me.  That's not exactly heavy crime.  Oh, and let's not forget that he gave me a psychotic episode, but, in all fairness, that's not really his fault.  It's not like he knew that I'm some kind of lightning rod for people like him.  It's not like he knew what he was going to do."

"There's not much useable evidence," Grissom said quietly.  "I don't think we'll find him."

"Does that bother you?"

"Yes."

"It shouldn't.  I mean, come on, Grissom!  This is more your fault than his."

He couldn't see Grissom's reflection with the glare on the window, but he could almost feel the knife he had stuck in his boss's back, and his grin hurt him.  It was too hard, too sharp, and too fierce.  He clapped a hand to his mouth, partially to hide it from some bewildered sense of shame, and partially to accentuate his words in a theatrical "oops" gesture.

"Did I screw up?  Ruin your image of the perfect victim?  Well, sorry, Grissom.  You have my most sincere apology.  I'm just a little crazy right now."

"Please look at me, Greg."

"Really rather not."

"Then tell me how you think I should have stopped it."

His fragile sense of self-control broke.  "I don't know.  I don't care."  He was either screaming or crying, and he couldn't tell either way.  Didn't care either way.  "I had a gun at the back of my neck and you want me to have a reason for any of this?  I can't do that.  I trusted you."

"Did you?"

"Didn't I?"

"Please turn around.  I don't like talking to your back."

He stared resolutely at the glass.  The Strip was beginning to turn darker, the buildings the color of soot, and lit by neon.  "They won't leave me alone, you know.  We're getting filmed right now."

"Are we?"

"Suicide watch.  They're so very scared that I might break this window and, oh, I don't know.  Cut up my arms, I guess.  Or just jump.  We do live in Vegas, and that move's very popular, here."

"When are they going to let me take you home?"

_Home.  What makes him think that I'd really let him take me anywhere?  What makes him think that he deserves that?  Or that I deserve him?  What makes him think that he's really the person I need?_

"Did any of the groceries make it back?"

Grissom's voice was almost a whisper.  "I saved the plantain for you.  The rest of it died a messy death."

"Kind of like me."

"You're not dead."

_Aren't I?  Are you so sure about that, Grissom?  Is anyone?  I didn't tell you that Catherine was here earlier, and that she flinched when I touched her hand.  No one likes the dead to move, and they like it even less when they touch.  I wanted to thank her for staying when I was delirious, but I saw how she looked at me - - like she was scared._

_It was easier for everyone to be here for me when I was asleep, wasn't it?_

He said, hoarsely, "Were you the one who was praying?"

"Nick prayed earlier.  I don't think he knows that anyone heard him, though."

"I heard him," Greg said, remembering Nick's voice as he stumbled over what to say.  "But Nick's not a Catholic, and I thought heard someone saying a Hail Mary."  Someone said a Hail Mary to do penance for some sin.  What sins did Grissom have that would drive him back to penance when he had given up on God so long ago?

_I'm his sin._

"I said one," Grissom allowed.

Greg felt his mouth form a broken smile.  "Was it enough?"

"Not nearly."

"Is that why you want to take me back?  I'm your sin, and I'm your penance, too?"

"You're not my anything, Greg," Grissom said quietly.  "Your father was the only person who ever tried to make you into some kind of possession.  You don't belong to us.  You belong _with _us, and no one's forgotten that.  You're not a means to an end."

"So what am I?"

"Greg."

_Fantastic.  He's such a great guy to be.  He has so many friends who all know so well what it's like to sit by his bed and wonder if he's going to wake up, or if he's going to lose it and just be some vegetable staring into the distance and talking about tarantulas.  Let's all be just like Greg, shall we?_

Grissom's hand on his arm was like a lightning bolt, and Greg practically jumped from his chair.

"I said don't touch me!"

_God - - who am I now?_

He caught sight of Grissom's face and his first thought was that the man had aged ten years.  More lines had developed at the corners of his eyes, and he was ghostly pale, just a shadow of the man who had been both intimidating and inspiring the night Greg had started to work in Vegas.  It looked like something had been eating at him.  His eyes were too light, and too wild.

_I'm hurting him, _he thought.  _All of this is hurting him.  What am I doing?_

_I'm not Grissom's penance, he's mine._

"I'm sorry," he said, unaware of his own tears until the moisture hit his cheeks.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Grissom, I promise, I'm sorry."

His head struck against his hands, cradling his face.

"But you haven't done anything, Greg," Grissom said desperately.  "You haven't done anything wrong."  His voice sounded insistent, as if he was begging Greg to hear him.  "None of this is your fault - - listen to me!  You didn't do anything. . ."  
  


_Doesn't matter._

_It's always been my fault._

Nathan Sanders could have told Grissom that.


	8. A Single Step

**Notes: **To RainbowsnStars - - I'm sorry about that.  There wasn't so much a clear reason for Greg not liking to be touched, more just that it involved human contact, something that he didn't really want at the moment.  KrazyKid - - I'll miss you, and have fun on your trip.  This story should run _approximately _the length of "Blood in the Water."  This chapter is pretty much the three-quarters mark.  And, finally, to Kathryn Mason-Sykes - - I'll see what I can do.  I think you'll like it.

Okay, I feel that you all deserve something nice after, you know, how I almost killed Greg again, so this chapter is actually pretty pleasant, relatively speaking.  It starts a path for recovery, is purposefully meant to echo the conversation in the first chapter, and I really hope you like it.

******

**Chapter Eight: A Single Step**

******

They'd painted his room.

Sometime between the grocery store, the hospital, the breakdown, and the return, someone had found the time to paint Grissom's guest bedroom.  Greg stood in the center, staring at the new yellow walls, and inhaling the scent, still edged with fumes.  The bed looked stiffer, too, as if someone had put on newer, more starched sheets.  He hedged his bets between Nick and Sara on the actual painting - - he'd read somewhere that yellow was the color of hope, and it sounded like the sort of thing that one of them would think of and use.  The flowers, daisies again, were definitely Sara's.  She'd left the same ones in his hospital room to meet his eyes after the coma.

He was pretty sure that sleeping in a yellow room with a vase of daisies was the sort of thing that should bother his sense of manly pride, but he was too tired to care.

Greg stripped off socks and the flimsy pair of pants they'd given him at the hospital, tugged the shirt over his head, and found himself in the uncomfortable position of hunting completely naked for wherever the anonymous cleaners had placed his clothes.  He found them neatly folded in the cedar chest at the foot of his bed, slithered into his pajama bottoms, and lay facedown on the mattress.  He was a few seconds from dozing off when a knock at the door startled him.

"Go ahead and come in," he said irritably.  "It's your house."  He dropped his face back to the pillow, inhaling the clean cotton smell.  His nose tickled.

"You'll suffocate doing that," Grissom said from the door.  He sounded almost amused.

Greg raised his head a fraction of an inch off the bed.  "This room smells like paint."

Grissom sniffed; nodded.  "Yes, it does."

"Was there something in particular you wanted, or, having escaped the hospital, am I still on suicide watch after all?  Hey, if you need any help cleaning me out, the razor's in the sink, my belts are God knows where, thanks to whoever cleaned up in here, and all of my shoelaces are still in my shoes.  Fancy that.  I don't own a gun."

Grissom sighed.  "You never make it easy, do you?"

"For you?"

"For anyone, yourself included.  And no, I wasn't going to check any of that, although, for your own reference, your belts are in your sock drawer."

Greg rolled over and stared at his ceiling.  There was a crack in the plaster that splintered down around the light fixture.  It looked almost like a spider-web.  He decided that Grissom either hadn't noticed it or had left it alone on purpose, hoping that it would attract actual spiders.  He named all the different species he could think of in his head, counting down: black widow, brown recluse, tarantula, and so on until he couldn't remember if he'd named one before.  It was simple and it filled his mind.

He could stare at that crack all night, worrying about spiders, and it would still be better than dreaming.

"Do you mind if I stay?"

Greg squeezed his eyes shut.  The crack winked out into darkness.  "I don't care."

"You cared a few weeks ago, remember?"  Grissom's voice was so infinitely gentle that it hurt.  Greg tightened his hands into fists and reminded himself again that Grissom hadn't caused any of this, that Grissom was only trying to help, and that, in fact, Grissom had been succeeding until the parking lot and that sudden chill at the back of his neck where the gun had touched his skin.  Grissom had been doing what no one else could do.  Grissom had seen through him and not wanted the fake-but-quick recovery.  He'd wanted it to be genuine, however long that took.

_He's not like Dad.  People are here for me now.  They paint my room when I'm lying unconscious because they expect me to come back._

It seemed to make him feel a little better.  The knot in his stomach loosened, anyway.

He admitted, "I'm kinda scared."  He covered up the genuine fear with a nervous laugh that sounded too loud in the small room.  "Like I need a nightlight or something, man, it's pathetic."

"Well, I don't have a nightlight, but I'll stay here until you fall asleep."

"What time do I clock in tomorrow?"

"You're not clocking in tomorrow.  As of three days ago, you've been on paid leave."  Grissom busied himself around the room, doing unnecessary tasks that seemed to serve as distractions.  He brushed away a line of silvery dust from behind an empty picture frame, and straightened Greg's jacket.  "I ought to have made you stay off longer when this first happened."

"I liked going back," Greg said, focusing on the crack in the ceiling again.  "It's - - comfortable."

"Comfortable or not, I'm not going to let you work yourself into a breakdown."

"Why not?"  His grin hurt his mouth.  "I mean, look at it realistically, boss.  I've really only ever had breakdowns on my leisure time.  Maybe I should work more."

"Can we discuss this?"

"What?"

"This annoying habit you're beginning to develop where you act like sarcasm is really going to change anything, including how we see you.  I don't know whether or not you're trying to fight off being vulnerable, or if you think that you only sound normal when you're smarting me off, but it's not working, you don't sound normal, and I'm sick of it."

"I'm sorry if I'm upsetting you."

"That's exactly the kind of thing I mean, Greg."

"Why?  How do I sound?"

"Poisonous.  You sound bitter."

"Don't you think I have enough to be bitter about?  A month out of a coma, and just when I'm finding my footing, someone pulls the rug out from under me?"  He pushed his palms down, hard, on the mattress and straightened, levering himself upwards so that he could face Grissom.  "Look at me.  I'm living with my boss and you're so worried about whether or not I'm going to go crazy that you're going to come in and stare at me until I fall asleep."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Going to go crazy," Grissom said quietly.  "Do you think that's likely?"

Greg started to say something and then snapped his mouth shut, pressing his lips together so that all the blood seemed to rush out of them.  He could practically feel the ridges of his teeth through his own skin.  He exhaled slowly.

_He's trying to get a reaction out of me.  He's a scientist, and I'm his experiment.  He wants to know how far he can push me before I start to snap, and once I snap, he'll want to know how hard and how badly.  He knows that I feel bad about what I said in the hospital, and he's using it against me._

"Maybe," he said.  "Maybe I will go crazy.  I wouldn't call it a refreshing change of pace, but it'd be something.  Is that the answer you're looking for?"

"It's not good enough," Grissom said.

"Story of my life."  Greg's hand squeezed the sheets almost against his will, and he had to look down to see if he was really doing it.

Grissom looked like he was going to reply to that, but he said, instead, "What would make you feel better?"

"What kind of question is that?"  Greg felt his face grown warm as he flushed.  "Do you really think I know, and I'm just going to be able to rattle it off?  Like, oh, a million dollars would really help, Grissom.  Or a backrub.  If I only had that cherry convertible I wanted, things would start going my way.  I don't know what would make me feel better, Grissom.  I don't have a clue."

"Then why do you think I should be able to tell what's going to upset you?"  Grissom sat down, not in the chair, but at the foot of the bed.  Greg shifted his legs to one side, grudgingly giving the other man a little bit more space.  "I'm not a mind-reader, Greg.  I'm trying to work through this with you the best I can, but I've never been good at knowing what you were thinking and I'm even worse at it now."

"So you think I'm different."

"I know you're different now.  That's not hard to figure out, and it's not an accusation.  You've changed.  Anyone would change, after what you've been through.  I'm just telling you that we're here, and we're trying to help, but we're human, and there's no need to jump down someone's throat because they aren't sure what mood you're in."

Greg smoothed the sheets around him, embarrassed of having mussed them in the first place.  "How did you know to take me grocery shopping?"  
  


"I didn't.  It was a gamble."

"It was working."

"I noticed that.  Were you happy?"

"I think so.  A little, at least.  It - - it felt good.  I wasn't expecting to be let down."  
  


Grissom closed his eyes suddenly, as if something had hurt him.  "I'm sorry about what happened.  I told you that I found you on the ground, and bleeding.  You wouldn't talk to me, you just kept screaming, and saying that you were dead.  I - - I panicked.  If I'd acted sooner, I might have been able to find whoever attacked you, but I was . . . preoccupied."

Greg tried to think about how he might react to seeing someone on their knees in a parking lot, dripping blood from their mouth, and howling.  He shuddered and tightened the blanket around his shoulders.

"I should have been there," Grissom finished.  "You were right, about what you said."

_"This is more your fault than his."_

"No."  Greg shook his head.  "I - - I wasn't.  I shouldn't have said that.  I didn't mean it."

"You did say it, you did mean it, and you were right.  I keep thinking about what it would have taken to get out there a little sooner.  If I'd been quicker about moving the groceries.  If I hadn't held open the door for the other person leaving."  Grissom smiled wearily.  "I can't seem to stop thinking about it.  I keep thinking that I can prepare myself for whatever you're going to throw at me, if I just rehearse everything beforehand, but you keep - - stepping outside the box."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

Grissom thought that he was right.  Grissom thought that he could have stopped what happened.  The only person blaming Greg was Greg, and the only person blaming Grissom (anymore, at least) was Grissom.  There was a cruel sort of irony about it.  Grissom had told him he was right, and that should have been, at the very least, gratifying to some extent, even bitterly, but the taste in his mouth was all of the sour with none of the sweet.

And that paint smell was driving him crazy.

"Do we have a deal, Greg?"  
  


He brought himself back to the conversation.  "I wasn't listening."  He didn't apologize, because he found it hard to feel sorry for that.  Other things, yes, but that, no.  He was entitled to his own little bit of selfishness, after everything else.

"I asked if we had a deal - - if we agreed that we were going to be able to talk instead of you going into defensive mode automatically and me having to chase you down some hall of mirrors every single time I want to have a conversation."

"I'm sure you didn't express it that way before."

"If you wanted the nicer version, you should have been paying attention.  Do we have a deal?"

Greg closed his eyes again, and thought of the bright platinum tint of Melissa's hair.  The feel of gunpowder residue spraying around his ear.  The vague remnants of some dipthalamine dream that he still carried around with him after all those days.  His father's smile.  And, of course, the smell of paint, the taste of Nick's cooking, the sight of Sara's daisies, and the feel of Catherine's hand brushing away his tears.  And grocery shopping.

They were trying.  He could - - he could try to help them.  If he deserved to be selfish sometimes, than they deserved for him to be unselfish sometimes.  They deserved to be considered.

"We have a deal," he said.  "Is this a formal thing, or can we just shake on it?"

"The old-fashioned way is fine."

They shook over the mess of covers.  Greg had to lean over his knees.

"Do you think you can sleep now?"

"I'm not scared anymore," he said, feeling idiotic again for saying that out loud - - like he was five, and prone to nightmares with embarrassing side-effects, "but the smell is still bothering me."

"I can't smell it anymore."

"And it's not you that I'm worried about.  If you feel guilty over letting me walk through a parking lot alone, how do you think you'll be able to live with yourself if I die from breathing in paint fumes all night?"

Grissom said, "Still bitter?"

"I still deserve that."

He could hear Grissom exhaling.  "Yes, you do.  I keep forgetting."

_Why do we both have to pretend to be fine sometimes even when we know that we've already broken apart?  _Greg yanked the sheets and they came un-tucked from the mattress with a rough pulling noise, falling around him a lump.  _I guess it gets to be easier - - you try out a conversation first to see if it's gonna work for you . . . being normal again._

"I'll sleep on the sofa," he said, and, arms full of covers, stalked into the living room, irrationally feeling better than he had before.


	9. Gimmick

******

**Chapter Nine: Gimmick**

******

Greg had a week off, and he spent most of his time climbing the walls of Grissom's townhouse.  He tried to spend the first day doing something that seemed almost constructive - - he snatched away newspaper crosswords and did them in front of the television.  He became well-versed in the soap opera episodes of the day.  He found a cardboard box of puzzles in Grissom's closet and spent a few hours constructing an elaborate watercolor on the coffee table.  He read entomology texts until his eyes crossed.

He was terribly, terribly bored.

The second day, he went on a cleaning spree and sprayed everything in Grissom's house with cleanser.  He dusted and vacuumed like a maniac, and made both beds at least three times apiece until the corners were as straight and square as an advertisement from _House Beautiful_.  He did all of the laundry, and then went through both closets and washed the items that even appeared remotely worn.  He polished four pairs of shoes and six belts.

Grissom's reaction upon coming home was, "So you're obsessive-compulsive now."

"I was bored."

"So you cleaned?"

"I was _really _bored."

He found a Blockbuster gift card balanced on his chest the next morning when he woke up, and he spent almost two hours loading up on videos and bags of cheap popcorn.  That was probably his favorite day.  He sprawled on the sofa in his college sweats and watched every single _Halloween _movie ever made, and he was starting on the first _Friday the 13th _when Grissom entered again.  Suddenly embarrassed of his viewing choices, Greg paused the movie on a machete shot and felt a warm flush rising in his neck.

"I liked _Hellraiser_, myself," Grissom said, shrugging.  "Move your legs."

It would have been more fun watching horror movies with Grissom if he hadn't been so eerily obsessed with analyzing the blood splatter and comparing it to the real thing.

"See, the arc is wrong," Grissom said, pointing at a spray of dark blood jetting from someone's neck.

"You are so freaking morbid."  Greg shook his head in disgust.  "I hope you never watch any of these movies on a date, because no girl would ever let you put your arm around her if you made comments like that all the time."

Grissom waited until a relatively still moment in the film to say, "So you left the house today."

"What?  Oh - - yeah.  I guess I did."

Idiot.  He should have realized that the gift card was a test, just like anything else.  Grissom rarely did anything without a plan behind it.  Grissom was checking to see if a gift card and the possibilities of entertainment for the afternoon would be enough to lure him out of shelter.  If, after Melissa and the parking lot, Greg would be able to leave at all.

He had.

"I didn't even think about it," he said, grinning.  "I never even thought about it."

Grissom stopped talking about blood spatter and they watched the rest of the movie in silence, Greg wearing a silly smile, and making hissing noises every time the machete swung through the air.  He entertained the thought that this kind of movie should have traumatized him more, but dismissed it almost instantly.

_So this is what happy feels like.  It's been awhile._

On the fourth day, he ran out of videos and invented the Post-it note game.  He made a run to a gas station, stocked up on bright yellow Post-its and Sharpies, and started leaving Grissom notes in the most unusual places he could think of.  He stuck one inside the sink, one on the carton of milk, two on Grissom's revolving fan, and even one on the showerhead.

One of them was a thank-you, shyly penned, and he hoped Grissom wouldn't say anything about it.  Most of the others were useless tidbits of things he wasn't sure Grissom knew - - mostly arcane facts on Scandinavian languages, scuba diving, and rock 'n' roll.

The one stuck to the milk carton was a note about his father.

_When I was eight, he took me to a baseball game, so I think he honestly tried.  But when I was nine, a fly ball gave me a bloody nose and I dropped the sport.  That was when I think he stopped trying.  He knew I was a geek when I begged for a chemistry set, and then I was a disappointment._

Grissom discussed Norway with him that evening, and even though the note was gone when Greg checked the fridge, Grissom never said anything about it.

That was how the Post-it note game began.

He'd leave them every day, scattered all over the house, and at least one of them would be about something he couldn't say out loud.  The only one of _those _notes that Grissom ever addressed, directly or indirectly, was the one Greg stuck to the main bedroom's lampshade, saying: _He told me once that I was worthless._

That night, over another rash of videos, Grissom told him that the week was almost up.

"I'll be glad to have you back," Grissom said.  "You're important to us."

He stopped leaving notes the night he went back to the lab, and it wasn't just because he was back on the horse and not freaking out about it this time.  The sudden end to the Post-it game was because his father had called.


	10. Matters of Blood

******

**Chapter Ten: Matters of Blood**

******

The phone rang fifteen minutes before he had to leave.  He was gathering up socks for laundry, his face already flushed with anticipation for the day ahead of him, and he'd been forcing his body to do busywork for the last hour.  Grissom had clocked in almost three hours ago, leaving Greg with the soothing reminder that he would be fine, and that any one of them would be more than happy to help if he wasn't.  Greg had showered and dressed early, and was propelling himself around with newfound, nervous energy, eager to get out the door, but not wanting to show up so early that Grissom knew about his longing to return to work.

Later, he would wonder if, having left early, he would have been able to stop everything else.

But the phone rang, and he dropped a cluster of socks onto the armchair and bounded to it, raising it to his ear.  "Hello?"

"Hello - - Dr. Grissom?"

He didn't recognize the voice.  He balanced himself on the arm of the chair, toying with the phone cord.  If the conversation ate up enough minutes, maybe time would hurry itself along for him.

"No, this is Greg Sanders.  Grissom's at work - - I can reach him if you want - - "

"Hello, Gregory."

Only one person had ever called him that, especially without being prompted.  His hand froze along the cord and his fingers pushed together, as if by pressing down on the cord, he could choke the signal rushing through it and somehow deaden the conversation.

_I could hang up_, he thought sickly, his stomach unsettled.  _I could just take the phone away from my ear and put it back down on the receiver - - no one would blame me, and Grissom least of all.  He hates my father.  They all hate him.  And if I don't, I can.  They'd let me, because they met him._

Just to swing his arm far enough to drop the phone back on the receiver - - but his arm was lead.  He couldn't move anymore.

"Hi, Dad."

Time refused to fly for him at all.  It settled in his head, weighty and insistent - - and there was too much of it, too much time, too many broken promises, too many implications, too many accusations, too many years of wanting something and getting nothing, and just too much regret and flayed-open secrets.  And had he really been enough of a fool to think that Grissom understood any of this at all?  Telling Grissom that his father had called him worthless was the tip of a mountainous iceberg.  There was so much more, lingering below in black, stagnant consciousness.

Hate and fear and disappointment.  Love and failure.  Need and denial.

It all came rushing back into Greg, breaking down all the protections he'd so naively thought he had - - all of the distance and all of the years separating them - - and his father could break that all down with a phone call.

Even when he'd thought he'd needed protection, he'd never thought he would need protection from this.

"It's been a very long time, Gregory.  Such a long time."

There was regret in that voice.  Regret and assurance.  Greg didn't know and couldn't understand why, after so many years, his father would choose to pick up a phone - - not when Greg had extended so many invitations so many times before.  He wasn't a child anymore, but when he was, he'd always waited for something like this.  Some call, some indication that he was more than a burden, and it had finally come, but he was more terror than joy.

He made himself swallow.  His throat felt painfully sore, and the taste in his mouth was bitter.

_Like old blood, and that's what we have here, ladies and gentlemen.  Old blood.  Some of my blood.  Blood of my blood.  Blood, quite literally, calling to blood._

"Grissom said that you stopped in when I was - - sleeping.  So it hasn't been such a long time for you, really.  I guess."

Grissom.  Grissom would have been able to help him.  By the time Greg had frozen to the phone, Grissom would have pried him from it and slammed it into a disconnection.  Grissom would have coaxed him into a car and back to work where things were normal, and sane, and where he had been, finally, so close to being happy again.

"It wasn't the same when you were like that," Nathan Sanders said.  "Seeing you unconscious, unresponsive - - it hurt, Gregory.  It would have hurt any father."

Love and pain and tears and madness.

When had his father ever said he loved him?  
  


"Sure," he said.  His vision seemed gray around the edges, like he was fighting to come up from underneath a tidal wave.  Of course, with scuba diving, you always had oxygen with you, and he'd never been worried underwater about running out of air.  But now, he was breathing so shallow that he might just suffocate in Grissom's living room.  "I - - I can get that."

"I was bitter when you were a child.  And I held onto that bitterness for so long.  Too long."

Greg wondered, fleetingly, if his father were drunk, and decided that not even alcohol would have clouded Nathan's mind or lowered his inhibitions enough to make this call.  Whatever else was behind Nathan's inhibitions, there certainly wasn't any kindness.

Doubt and fear and longing and blood.

There was so much blood between them.  The blood flows from father and son.  The blood demanded love, respect, and nurture.  The blood that had seeped through his bandages in the hospital - - the blood that had filled his mouth when he had bitten through his tongue in the parking lot - - the blood that Grissom thought was soiling his hands - - it was Nathan's blood, too.

"I really, really have to go into work, Dad."  He wasn't sure that he could make himself talk anymore, but the words were starting to come.  "I - - I'm already running a little late."  He looked at the clock and saw that he wasn't, but he was close.  He needed to throw the phone down and run for the door; drive as fast traffic allowed to the lab.  Needed to surround himself with his friends and forget the ominous ties of blood.

"Gregory, please.  Give me a second chance."

  
The time for second chances had been years ago.  There had been second, third, fourth, fifth chances - - there were too many chances to count, and Nathan had thrown them all away.

But he had never asked for one before.

"Whatever you want."  He screwed his eyes shut as if he could block out the nervousness assaulting his senses right along with the light.  He tried to speak, but what came out was a strangled, tearful barking noise that sounded something like a laugh.  "Why do you even have to ask?  You know that you've always been able to have whatever you wanted from me."

"Yes," Nathan said, and there was something in his voice that was unidentifiable to Greg, something sickeningly prideful.  Then, in the time it took to blink, it was gone.  "You've always been a good boy, Greg.  You've always been able to believe in people."

_Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me.  And I was starting to believe them, too.  But you've got your chance, whatever number we're up to now, and if you let me down, I just might go crazy for real.  Because this is what it all comes down to, right, Dad?  All my years of asking, and you're finally the one who wants something from me._

"I'm staying in a hotel on the Strip.  It's called the Siesta Inn.  If you could come up - - we could talk."

"Give me a day," he said, horribly aware of the way his voice stuttered on the sounds.  "Give me a day to - - to get things together - - before I take off.  Things have been rough lately, and if I just disappear, Grissom's going to be worried about me."

He relished the taste of the words.  Someone would be worried for him.  Someone would be nervous if he just pulled up stakes and left.

"Grissom," Nathan said.  It sounded almost like a hiss.

He started to say, "Dad, I'm living in his house," but the words stuck in his throat, and refused to come out.  All of the things Grissom had done for him, and when it came right down to it, Greg was a sad defender.  The gray around the edges of his vision was turning slowly into black.  It was like staring through a tunnel.

"I have to go."  He was really going to be late now.

The socks were still in a pile on the chair, but he couldn't think about them right then.  The taste like blood in his mouth had grown stronger.

"I'll - - I'll see you tomorrow," he said shakily, and lifted the phone from his ear.

If his father said anything about love, Greg couldn't hear it.  He clicked the phone into the receiver and rubbed the sweat away from his brow.  He thought that he could hear his own heartbeat pounding away in his chest.  He'd stuck a Post-it to the phone three hours before, a yellow little marker with an unusual drawing of a duck and the word for it in Norwegian.  He hadn't gotten around to putting up any of the others yet, though he'd had some plans - -

He'd been thinking about sticking one to a coat hanger - -

He could hardly breathe.  He tore the Post-it from the phone and crumpled it into his hand.


	11. Meaning

**Note: **Okay, I'm afraid that this chapter has a touch more melodrama than I'd like - - mostly because it concerns Greg and Grissom having a chat about Greg's evil father, and that has an inherent edge of melodrama because of the subject matter alone, but it also deals somewhat with the issue of Grissom being Greg's surrogate father (hopefully subtly).  Tell me if I went overboard, please.

******

**Chapter Eleven: Meaning**

******

It was Grissom who figured it out, of course.  It always had to be Grissom.

Just when he'd been doing so well with everything, too.  He'd sailed through the day, getting all the results out in record time, joking with Nick and Sara when they stopped in for a cautious chat, and he even played Black Flag like it was going out of style.  It practically shook the walls, and he'd been happy about it, too.  It wasn't pretending - - it was saying goodbye.  After his lunch, he went down to the administrative offices and politely excused himself from the next day's work.

And Grissom had to figure everything out.

They drove home separately, and Greg was channel-surfing on Grissom's couch, his chin resting on his knee as he hugged it to his chest.  Grissom sat down beside him, and said, "You might as well tell me where you're going to go, Greg."

Greg tapped the mute button with his finger.  "What makes you think I'm going anywhere?"

"I told you before that I can always tell when you're acting."  Grissom's eyes were frustratingly noble.  "You've been taking your goodbyes all day.  Where are you going?"

"Just somewhere in town."  He averted his eyes; shooting his gaze downwards to the floor.  He could feel Grissom's stare on his face and tried to resist the urge to squirm.

"You're meeting someone," Grissom said, rationalizing it aloud.  "Who?  You seem almost ashamed of this - - Greg, if this is about a girl - - "

He almost laughed at that, but he bit down hard on the inside of his lip.  "No, Grissom.  I'm not going to a hotel just to sleep with a hooker."

"Then why won't you even look at me?  What on earth do you think you need to hide so badly that you think I won't understand?  Haven't I been taking care of you?"  

There was some aching insecurity in there, and it made Greg feel guilty, because, yes, Grissom was trying, Grissom was trying more than anyone ever had tried for him before, and even if it was a little insulting to think that he was that desperately in need of someone to look out for him - - well, he had needed it.  And Grissom had needed someone that needed looking after.

"Yeah," he said softly.  "You've done everything.  I don't think I ever thanked you for it."

"You did.  You wrote me a note."

"The Post-it," he said, remembering.  "Right."

"But there aren't any Post-its hanging around tonight," Grissom said, still watching him.  "I know, because I've been in every single room and gone through all of the usual places.  There aren't any.  And since I can't think of an ordinary event that would make you just decide, rather abruptly, to stop leaving them laying around, something must have happened."

"There was one," he said.  "I had one with a duck on it, next to the phone but - - I threw it away."

"So should I blame the duck?"

His smile felt weak.  "No, don't blame the duck."

"Then, by process of elimination, I'll blame the phone.  You said that you had the Post-it right next to it, so when you decided to throw the note away, you must have been near the phone.  Taking a call, or making a call.  I'm guessing the former - - who called here, Greg?  What has you thinking that you need to run away again?"

He didn't say anything.

That said everything.

"Your father," Grissom said.  His voice was flat.  "I told him to stay the hell out of Las Vegas.  I told him to stay the hell away from _you_."

"He - - he didn't listen, I guess."

He didn't think that he had ever seen Grissom look so angry.  Greg couldn't decide if his eyes were scorching hot or freezing cold, but they were intense, narrowed, and hateful.  His mouth was a thin line, and every muscle in his face looked clenched.

"You are not going to go and meet him."

Greg had been ready to apologize for dropping that on Grissom, ready to say he was sorry for not telling him right away, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth, something malfunctioned, and what came out, in a disbelieving voice, was, "Are you telling me that I _can't_?"

"Yes," Grissom said.  "That's exactly what I'm telling you."

"That's ridiculous."  The television was still playing, and he clicked it off; tossed the remote down on the floor.  "You can't tell me that."

"I am."  Grissom leaned forward, all earnest in his anger.  "Greg, that man flew in here because we asked him to - - and he did nothing but cause trouble.  You don't know, you weren't really here, but he had everyone scared to death about what he could do to you.  What he _had _done to you."

"I guess you can't understand what he did do, then," Greg said.  "Since you weren't really there."

"I'm not going to play this game with you," Grissom said, shaking his head.  "We've sparred this way too many times since you woke up.  You were doing so much better.  We had conversations instead of battles.  And is this all it takes to send you back to _that _again?  Your father."  He sank his hand into the pillow, depressing layers of stuffing.  "Your _father_.  No.  I'm not going to allow this."

"You don't get it, Grissom.  You don't understand."

"So tell me."

Greg sighed and pressed his knees tighter against his chest.  It hurt his ribs, and he squeezed harder in vicious delight.  

"When I was a kid, all I ever wanted was for him to notice that I existed.  To care, okay?  And I know I'm not a kid anymore, I know that it's pathetic that I still want him to care about me, but I can't help it.  Do you like that?  I'm finally admitting just what you've always suspected, Grissom!  I'm pathetic!  Is this the kind of catharsis you were waiting for, all those times when you looked at me like you couldn't get away fast enough?  When you used me like I was something you couldn't wait to throw away?  Fine."

Grissom's eyes were closed.  He said, "No.  You don't get to do this.  You don't get to make me the villain, Greg.  Whatever I did or didn't do, that doesn't matter now.  You can't blame me for all of that."

"Let me guess - - you're just human, right?"

When had he started sounding that bitter again?  Was this all his father?  Was a simple phone call enough to corrupt him - - to ruin whatever they had built, oh-so-tenuously, over the last few months?  A single conversation, was that really enough to unravel him?

_I'm my father's son_.

That terrified him, but it wasn't enough to make him stop.

"Yes," Grissom said.  "You need to remember that.  I can't always be who you want me to be.  I can't always be who I want to be, either.  But I've been doing my best, and I've done more in six months than he did in your entire life."

"Did I ever tell you," Greg said, feeling like he was just hearing himself recite the words from far away, "that everything means more when you can't get enough of it?"

"No.  You never told me that."

"Didn't I?  Not even on a Post-it?  Not even on one of the ones we don't talk about?"  
  


"No, Greg.  You never told me."

"I've always thought it, though.  If you're starving to death, and someone gives you food, it means so much more than when you eat every day, right?  Even if they don't give you enough to fill you up - - even when it's just a crumb, it matters so much more."

Grissom said nothing.  His eyes were fixed on Greg.

"When I was thirteen - - that's a year after my mom left, by the way - - I had soccer practice, and I was waiting after school for someone to pick me up, except . . . no one came.  The coach gave me a ride home after we waited an hour.  You would have liked him, Grissom.  He looked at me kind of like you do - - like he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry."

"I don't - -"

"Hey, let me finish," Greg said, but he didn't think there was any real rancor in his tone.  "Anyway, my dad was home the whole time.  Not doing anything important, by the way, just sitting there, watching a football game.  It rained after the game.  I was soaking wet, and when I came in, he told me to try not to drip on the carpet."

"I'm sorry," Grissom said.

Greg shook his head.  "You really don't get it, do you?  Not even now?  Grissom, this is - - this kind of thing happens every day.  We see worse than this every day.  How many child abuse cases have you processed where some kid's been beaten, raped?  Where someone they trusted turned on them?  Don't you see that I was lucky?  Don't you know that?"

"You were lucky that you left," Grissom said.  "That's all.  You deserved better."

"It meant more," Greg said.  "It meant more because he never gave me enough.  He always knew me, always knew where to hit to make it hurt - - again, we're not talking physical here, before you overreact.  He just - - he always knew.  The next soccer game, he was in the stands, cheering me on like he couldn't be more proud, and then he left after the game, before I could meet up with him.  I rode my bike home.  It wasn't raining then."

"Were you angry?"

"No.  I'd never been happier.  He came.  He looked at me like he loved me for over an hour.  Getting ditched afterwards was nothing."  He smiled.  "So now that I've told you the whole story - - or some part of it, anyway, what do you think?"

"I think that your father is very talented at manipulating people," Grissom said.  "And I think that he's very good at seeing weaknesses.  And I don't think that you should go and meet him."

Greg was glad the television was off, because it gave him pure silence and darkness to stand up and find his shoes.  "I can't do that, Grissom.  I'm really, really sorry.  But if I go, and even if it's just for an hour, it'll be worth it, no matter what happens afterwards.  Even if he really is just who you think he is.  But it's going to mean something."

"It won't mean anything," Grissom said, and he grabbed at Greg's shoulder, his hand squeezing so hard that Greg thought he could her the bones cracking.  "It won't mean anything - - this isn't going to turn out how you want, no matter what happens.  Stay here.  Stay _home_."

"It's not home," Greg said softly.  "And you're not my family."


	12. In Margaritaville

******

**Chapter Twelve: In Margaritaville**

******

It was one in the morning when he stopped at a store and bought some clothes.  Nothing cheap, because his father could always tell that kind of thing, but a damn expensive suit with all the cash he had tucked away in his jeans' pockets.  He changed in the restroom of a gas station and tried to tame his hair.  It was blonde now, and his father wouldn't like that, but he didn't have the time to buy some chestnut dye and get it back to the way it used to be.  He just calmed it down, his hands shaking, and rinsed his face off in the rusty sink.

His face looked hollowed out, and he knew that it hadn't looked like that before.

_I'm a skeleton_, he thought.  _Dr. Robbins should have me spread out on his table any day now.  But what would he decide was my cause of death?_

The bathroom smelled like marijuana and bubble gum.  This wasn't a place he could stay in forever.  He had to tear himself away from the sink and go back to his beat-up Denali in the parking lot.  Had to finish the drive to the Siesta Inn.

He was getting soap under his fingernails.

He tore his hands from the sink and his eyes from the mirror.  The smooth fabric of his new clothes felt distasteful on his skin, like an unwelcome caress.  They formed a shell around him.

He searched for paper towels, but the bathroom was empty.  Back in the car, he dried his hands with fast food napkins and curled them up; tossed them into the plastic bag by the passenger's seat.  His hands curled around the steering wheel, gripping it until his knuckles went white, but at the third red light, he managed to rip one away long enough to switch the radio on.  He turned the volume up as loud as it could go, and screamed the lyrics hoarsely.  The car seemed to tremble with the stereo.

The Siesta Inn was small and glitzy.  Greg pulled into an empty space and leaned his head down against the wheel.  His breathing came fast and hard.

_This is going to mean something, right?  It's going to mean more than anything else possibly could.  He - - Grissom just doesn't understand.  He doesn't get it, no matter how I tried to explain it to him.  He doesn't even realize that one of the reasons I tried so hard to impress him was because, in the beginning, he reminded me of my father._

"We all have to make our own choices, Grissom," he said.

He hated how his words echoed.

He got out of the car, closing his door behind him, but not bothering to lock it.  There was nothing in there that someone else wasn't welcome to steal.  There was nothing in his life right now that he couldn't throw away - - _like you threw away Grissom? _- - without hesitation.

At the front desk, he looked like a model young man.  Clean-cut, in his pretty suit, and charming, with his pretty smile.  He told the clerk that he was meeting someone in the dining area, and asked so politely if he could wait there.  She flushed when she looked at him, and told him that it wouldn't be a problem at all.  She had dark curly hair and a gap-toothed smile, and looked more like Sara than Melissa Sharpe, so it was bound to be okay.

He ordered a frosty beer in the dining room, and waited.

After five minutes, his calm unraveled, and he started getting antsy.  The fidgeting habits he'd lost with the coma came back in full.  He pushed the beer far away from him so that he wouldn't drink it so fast, and the next time the waiter came by, he ordered.  He had no idea what he'd said, only that the young man told him it would be about fifteen minutes before he got it.  He thanked him, and drank a little more of the beer he'd been trying to deny himself.

It was twenty minutes before the food came.  He was halfway through it before he discovered that it was a club sandwich.  A smear of mayonnaise was on his left index finger.  He excused himself to the bathroom and held his stomach like he was going to throw up, but the food stayed down, despite his nausea.  He washed his hands, washed his face, and came back inside with a reassuring nod to the staff, telling them without words that he wasn't trying to slip off without paying.

Thirty minutes passed.  There were people waiting in the lobby, and the waiter started offering to bring him a check.  His hands were shaking again.  He ordered dessert.

Fourteen minutes later, he accepted a check.  He tipped well, because he knew that without that, he would have been a strange story to tell in gossip - - the pale, wide-eyed customer who sat for so long by himself in a hotel where he wasn't staying.  The tip was compensation.

Five minutes later, he left the restaurant to stand in the lobby.

An hour later, a good Samaritan wearing that mantle of a bellhop asked him, cautiously, if he had a place to spend the night.  He asked if a Nathan Sanders was staying in the hotel.  The bellhop, with a nervous grin, said that he would check, and came back a few minutes later.

"No, sir.  No one of that name is staying here."

_"It won't mean anything - - this isn't going to turn out how you want, no matter what happens."_

He had three hundred dollars in the pocket of his new suit.

"Can I have a room for the night?"

"I'll check the register," the kid said, brightening visibly.  Here was a customer - - here was something he could understand, without unnecessary complications.  He disappeared again and came back, like a Jack-in-the-box.  "We have several available rooms.  Do you have a floor preference?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Follow me, then."

He went to the desk and signed in.  The name field was simple, but the address presented more of a complication.  His apartment, which had been eerily vacant since the coma, or Grissom's house?  He chose the apartment, because it was the one listed on his driver's license, and because he didn't think he could ever go back to Grissom's house.

The room was tiny and set off strange feelings of claustrophobia.

He read the Bible under the phone for two hours, and kept waiting for his father to show up, but nothing happened.

He read the story of the prodigal son, and then closed it.

With nothing left, he spread himself out on his bed without turning down the comforter first, and stared up at the cracks on the ceiling.  

None of them even looked remotely like a spider-web.

He didn't turn the lights off, but eventually, he fell asleep anyway.


	13. Something to Believe

**Note: **You really deserve an apology for his wait, and you have one, most sincerely.  I'm really, really sorry that I kept you waiting, but things have been really confusing and hectic lately.  But, of course, I will finish this story - - I can't leave Greg stranded in a hotel forever, you know - - and actually, this is the second-to-last chapter, and I think you can tell from the way this one ends, what kind of a real ending you're going to have this time around.

Greg.  Nick.  Phone call.

******

**Chapter Thirteen: Something to Believe**

******

Greg awoke at noon with a headache thundering behind his temples and Grissom stuck in his head.  He turned over, pulling the mess of covers with him, and stared at the red numbers on the clock until his eyes burned.  His limbs felt awkwardly long, and too heavy for him to lift.  For almost a full two minutes, he couldn't quite remember where he was, and then it all came rushing back into him, intensifying both his headache and his pain, until his knees jerked up to his chest and his heard curved downwards.  The inn.  His father.  Grissom.

Grissom.

He should never have said those things to Grissom.  Never should have told him that he wasn't family - - when Grissom had even acknowledged, once, in the hospital, that he was.  Never should have said any of the hurtful things he'd said - - but it was just too late to take them back.

It was, in fact, too late for anything.

He flinched, remembering the blindsided look in Grissom's eyes when he had thrown that last, fatal comment into the conversation - - the way Grissom looked like he had just absolutely never seen it coming, not in a million years.  Never expected the casual cruelty that Greg had learned about from the best teacher possible.

"Like father, like son," he said quietly.  "Man, I am so fucked."

He never wanted to be the kind of father that would leave his son.  Then again, he had never hoped to be the kind of son that left the best father he had, but he had abandoned Grissom with hardly a thought, so utterly bent on Nathan.  The truth of an affection he'd never demanded and always found traded for the chance of an affection he'd always craved and never been given.

Karmic retribution at its best.

His hand found the phone, but his fingers, poised over the numbers, hesitated.  Why did he have to call?  His car was waiting in the parking lot, and he could just go down, get inside, and drive away from everything.  He could drive until Las Vegas, and even Nevada faded away into the distance - - drive until the miles were too high to matter.  He could drive until Grissom's face faded from his memory - - until he forgot all about wonderfully stupid things like plantain and Post-its.  He could hit the east coast - - go back to New York - - find a job, and go scuba-diving in the summer.

It was so close to being a happy ending that for a moment, he smiled, lost in the memory of how the water felt around him, pressing against his skin through the wetsuit, as he watched the fish dance through the water with uncommon grace.

But he didn't deserve that kind of an ending.  It was selfish and stupid and so very much like the person he had become.

He wanted to be the Greg he used to be, and he thought that he deserved that.  He certainly didn't deserve to be selfish anymore - - he'd screwed this one up royally all by himself.

He dialed Nick.  He got two rings, and came within an inch of hanging up before Nick answered sleepily, the twang of his Texas accent showing strongly.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Nick.  It's Greg."

It was a mark of how bad things had gotten that Nick's first reaction was alarm.  "Greg?  Is something wrong?  Where's Grissom?"

Greg ran a shaky hand through his hair.  "Nothing's wrong, and Grissom's still at his house, I guess.  I'd think.  I don't know."

"You don't know?"  Nick sounded even more awake, and even more alarmed, despite Greg's continued insistence that there was nothing wrong.  Greg could hear clattering noises in the background, and he made a guess that Nick was fumbling out of bed.  "Aren't you with him?  Where are you?"

"A hotel."

"What the hell are you doing at a hotel?  I know he didn't kick you out."  More anonymous noise in the background, and then muffled curses.

Greg sighed.  "No, he wouldn't have ever kicked me out, would he?"

"Listen, Greggo, I'm tired, I'm frazzled, and I'm worried.  Getting half-answers out of you is not going to help me any.  If you could just tell me what's going on, I'd be really grateful."

"I, um - - I left.  Grissom's."

"Why?"

This was the hardest part - - like ripping off a Band-aid, he thought cynically, and gritted his teeth, determined to get it over with fast and hard.  "I went to go meet my father."

There was a long pause, and for once, even the background of Nick's phone was utterly silent, as if someone had covered the phone.  He closed his eyes and got a visual of Nick - - standing in his socks and boxers on a messy bedroom floor, covering the phone with his hand, as anger seeped in and out of his face.  He found himself mimicking the posture, his shoulders rounding as if to ward off some unimaginable evil that was headed for him.

Finally, Nick said, "Did he show?"

Nick had found the heart of the problem.

"No," Greg said.  "He didn't.  And I was an ass."

"I figured that much out," Nick said, his voice soft and furious.  "Grissom would never kick you out, but there's no way he'd let you go to talk to your dad alone, so whatever you said to make him back off - - it must have been pretty bad.  Must have cut pretty deep."

"Yeah.  I think it went all the way."

He felt horrible, and there was some strange satisfaction in that, because he wouldn't have felt horrible a few months ago about what he'd said.  He would have taken it as his right, as a victim, to lash out - - he would have thought that what he'd done wasn't his own fault.  Would have accepted cruelty as his due, and have expected forgiveness.

He didn't know what to expect now, and there was a bittersweet sense of normalcy returned about that.

"I feel bad," he said, understating it.

"Good."  Nick sounded savage.  "You ought to.  Where are you?"

"Siesta Inn," he said, sitting down hard on the bed.  The mattress sagged underneath him.  "I don't need you to come, though - - I've got my car - -"

"Oh, I'm not coming," Nick said.  Greg could hear the quick sound of a pencil moving against paper.  "I'm going to call Grissom, and he's going to come and pick you up, and you're going to apologize until you go hoarse or until your tongue falls out, whichever comes first.  And then he's going to take you back here, and we can act like you don't owe me anything."

Greg smiled.  "I'll be very timidly grateful," he said.

He heard Nick's reluctant chuckle, and then listened as it faded away.  "You screwed up pretty badly this time, Greg," Nick said quietly.  "But you know that we'll always be here for you."

"I know that," Greg said, and to his own surprise, found that he did.


	14. Curable

**Notes: **Yes, it's the final chapter!  I really hope you like it, and its resolution, and there are, of course, more notes at the end of the chapter.  Oh, and to KrazyKid, of course you can archive _Twelve Ways to Grieve_.  That would be fantastic.

******

**Chapter Fourteen: Curable**

******

The funny part was, he'd never once doubted that Grissom would show.  He didn't fix himself up for Grissom - - he just waited downstairs in the bar with his usual brand of bedhead and drank a lot of Coca Cola, because with his current hangover, he didn't want to go anywhere near alcohol.  He calculated time and distance and the variable of what kind of mood Grissom was in, and in two hours, he had company on the seat next to him at the bar.

Grissom gave his order to the bartender and said nothing to Greg.

Beginnings were the hardest part, but he had a lot to make up for, so Greg pushed his glass away, his fingers slipping against the frosted edge, and stared at the bar.  He couldn't make himself look Grissom straight in the eye - - he was afraid of what he might see.  The horrible anger - - or worse, forgiveness, when he knew he didn't deserve it.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.  "I'm so sorry."

"I forgive you," Grissom said, like that was going to solve anyone's problems.  Greg knew that Grissom was telling the truth - - that he wasn't just accepting the apology for the sake of moving on - - he knew that he was forgiven, but that wasn't enough.

"I was - - I said - - what I said, I shouldn't have said.  I never meant that."  He struggled to find the right words, but could only find his own, and had to settle.  "I should have known that he wasn't going to come, and even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered.  I had everything I wanted, and I just - - gave it up.  Like that.  Because of him."

He found the courage to look at Grissom, who was gazing at him evenly, with no readable expression in his pale blue eyes.

"And I shouldn't have done that," he said.  "I guess there's something of him in me after all."

"You're nothing like him," Grissom said, but perhaps he no longer sounded as sure of that as he had before, but then his voice steadied.  "You're not your father, Greg."

"There's enough of him in me," Greg said shakily, and laughed.  "Like a virus, I guess.  I'm infected."

Grissom smiled at him, and that almost killed him, because he'd known he was forgiven, and had believed it, but not all the way through until that smile - - that coddling gentleness that told him Grissom still believed, despite everything, that Greg was the only victim.

"There are cures," Grissom said.

Greg thought, desperately, of what he had given up.  The early morning silence in Grissom's house as the two of the drank coffee or hot chocolate.  The comforting, slightly chemical scent of the lab.  Master of his domain, right?  The horror movies with the analyzed blood spatter and Grissom relentlessly hogging all the popcorn.  The plantain in his fruit salad.  The Post-it notes.  The aching, slightly heartbreaking feeling that had built up inside him - - being home.

His father had known, somehow, the exact time and the exact way to bring him down.  But he couldn't even blame his father for this, because he had let it happen.  He had gone along with the expectations, and actually believed that what passed between them would mean more then months of care - - months of unexpected fellowship.

"I'm sorry, Grissom," he said again.  "I don't have an excuse this time.  I just - - I should have trusted you.  I should have stayed."

"Yes," Grissom said.  "You should have."  That remaining gentleness on his face helped wash some of the hurt away, against Greg's will.  He would have liked to keep that guilt, but Grissom was tearing it away from him by continuing to stay, continuing to look at him with that strange touch of affection.  "What are you going to do now, Greg?"

"I don't know," he said honestly.  "I really screwed things up, Grissom.  I don't know how to make any of it better."

Grissom squeezed his shoulder, and unexpected but welcome gesture of comfort that caught Greg off-guard.  It was gone in an instant, but it had been real.  It had had meaning.

"You'll figure it out.  I'll help you."

He tried to smile back, and made it.  Just barely, but it was there, and genuine.  "You know, the last time I went out drinking, I ended up in a coma.  I was kind of scared that it would turn out the same way this time, but I figured I had nothing left to lose."  He swallowed the last of his Coke and tapped it down on the bar.  Through the red glass, the rest of the room winked into a bright blur.  "But I don't think that'll happen, this time."

"No?"

"No.  I don't."  
  


"May I ask why?"

"Because, this time, I'm with someone I trust.  And I don't think that you'd hurt me - - and I'm sorry about when I hurt you."

Grissom shook his head.  "No more apologies, Greg.  Apologies don't let anyone move on, and that's something I'd like a lot right now.  Moving on.  Do you think we could leave?"  He looked around the Siesta Inn with palatable disdain.  "I've never liked this place."

"You want to go?"  
  


"Yes," Grissom said.  "With you, obviously, or I wouldn't have come."

Greg watched in silence as Grissom settled both tabs with a hearty tip, and then he led Greg outside and into the waiting Tahoe.  It was sleepily mixed with the night, making it hard to find, and Grissom led him to the passenger's side.

Feeling like he was sleepwalking, and wearing a dreamy sort of smile, Greg opened the door and climbed inside. The warm air settled over him like a blanket, and he snuggled back into the seat, letting his muscles slowly relax.

He had been so tired for so long.

Grissom slid the car out of the parking lot and onto the strip of long black road.  The headlights made arrows through the dark, and the night fell in around them as they drove in silence.  Finally, Grissom asked him, "Where do you want to go?"

Greg knew that he could name any kind of destination, and Grissom would take him there.  Mexico.  Maine.  Kentucky.  Rome.  South Africa.  Some obscure little city in some obscure little country that, to reach, they would have to buy maps and travel guides.  The moon.

He could go anywhere from here - - absolutely anywhere at all.

Greg leaned his head back against the seat.

"Take me home," he said.

Grissom smiled and turned for the dim lights on the horizon.

"Home it is."

~ finis

**And there we have it.**

After placing poor Greg and poor Grissom through a relentless downpour of angst, they are now back on their feet and on the road back home.  I've really enjoyed doing both "Blood in the Water," and this story, with its slightly more appropriate title.  *grin*  And I have to thank you all so much for always reading, and making this all splendidly worthwhile.  And just for you, I did not pull out that sneaky twist ending I had in mind.  Also, then this would have become a trilogy, and the angst would truly never end.

We're better off this way, I promise, but if you want to know what the twist was, you can e-mail me.

Don't worry, I will not give up on the Greg-angst.  He's far too much fun to torture, and I have this vague crazy plotline that begins with a literal bang - - of a gun - - and then tells the story backwards to show exactly how Greg ended up in his situation, and what went wrong to take him to that point. . .

Poor guy.  We all have it in for him.

Again, thank you for all your wonderful feedback.


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